Category: Episode by Episode
Doctor Who episode 432: The Hand of Fear – Part One (2/10/1976)
After the lushness of The Masque of Mandragora this is a clear step backwards. It doesn’t help that the opening scenes on Kastria are the worst bit of the episode as a plastic-looking spaceship wobbles into view in front of a BBC starfield before some quilts called King Rokon and Zazzka shout at each other about the obliteration module of ‘Eldrad the traitor’. It’s the kind of opening Doctor Who starts sending up itself when Douglas Adams takes charge, and it hangs this off a distinctly shaky peg. The prestige of the previous story disperses as completely as Eldrad.
Doctor Who episode 431: The Masque of Mandragora – Part Four (25/9/1976)
Sad to say, like several Season 13 stories, this final episode doesn’t entirely work. In the last scenes the Doctor apparently allows half the masked revellers to be murdered by the Brethren, and then allows the Brethren themselves to be vaporised while he imitates Hieronymus (including a Dead Ringers style impersonation – sign him up, Big Finish). It’s ruthless, and a bit of a Pyrrhic victory given how important the gathered dignitaries (‘The most precious heads in all Europe,’ says Marco, gazing adoringly at the Duke) are meant to be to Earth’s future.
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.
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