Classic Who: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Death to the Daleks
The Tom Baker era may be over for me, but there's a whole world of other Doctors out there still waiting to be discovered. As already stated, I'm starting my post-Baker viewing by catching up on Sarah Jane's adventures with the Third Doctor, because Sarah is the only person in the entire Whoniverse who can cheer me up in the absence of Four. In fact, in so doing, I'm picking up a thread I began in February with The Time Warrior, because even by then I loved her so much that I wanted to see where she had started out.
Third Doctor: Invasion of the Dinosaurs
It's possibly a pity for all concerned that continuing onwards from The Time Warrior meant that my first post-Baker Who was Invasion of the Dinosaurs. I mean, I tried with the dinosaurs - I really did. I even managed to enjoy the fight between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Brontosaurus outside the Tube station because, hell - even if it was done with badly-realised puppets, it was still a dinosaur fight, dammit! But when I progressed onto Death to the Daleks afterwards, it became quite clear that the 'special' effects in Invasion... were not merely bad (which is forgiveable) - they were bad for the time (which is not).
And that's a shame, because actually there's some good material here. The plot is quite straightforwardly political, in a rather charmingly idealistic way that I also recognise from Baker's season 12. It might seem a little simplistic now, but basic respect is due to an early '70s children's programme which set out to show that Pollution Is Bad For Our Planet, but that extremists who try to foist their solution to the problem onto everyone else are, too. What's more, there are some very neat little details of structure and setting that gently lift the production up to a higher level. For example, the way that children's paintings on the wall in the school which UNIT seem to have co-opted as their command headquarters echo the 'pollution' theme of the story: sailing-boats on a blue ocean and cacti in the desert, next to factories and aeroplanes. Or subtle little parallels being drawn between the Doctor and Professor Whittaker (the evil!scientist behind it all), when the two of them are shown in close succession getting annoyed at people interrupting their work.
My primary reason for watching, of course, was Sarah Jane, and she entirely lived up to my expectations! I noticed right back when I was watching The Ark in Space that Sarah doesn't work quite as well in off-Earth stories as she does on her home territory, where she has her own resources and her own motivations to draw on - and that rule plays very much in her favour in Invasion.... In fact, her desire to get a good story out of what is going on gives her a much-needed and very plausible reason to continue hanging around the Doctor, without having to compromise her independence of character at this stage by having her trapped with him against her will on an alien planet. Instead we can see her busily throwing herself into the action, investigating leads, asking searching questions, working out people's nefarious schemes, pulling off tricks of her own and generally demanding better treatment for all. Yet still she retains the innocence and vulnerability that makes her believable and loveable, too - like her horrified reaction when she sees a burglar who has just been looting a property killed in front of her. That balance is a winning formula - as, of course, Donna has shown recently, too.
Sarah also made a sterling contribution to my ability to reconcile to a not-Baker!Doctor - especially Pertwee, whom I'd been distinctly put off thanks to a random viewing of The Claws of Axos. One of the first moments when I found myself actually quite liking him was when I saw the stab of concern go through him at hearing that Sarah had been taken off by the crooked and aggressive General Finch. And I liked the jokey, pally relationship that's starting to develop between the two of them, too, and especially her sweet little smile when he won her the right to stay in London with the UNIT crew by saying that she is presently acting as his assistant. Yes, he may be a bit more Deadly Serious about things than Four, but there's a warm side to him too which I'm starting to like. That said, I really don't like the Venusian aikido business: it's the equivalent of K-9's laser or Ten's sonic screwdriver, making things far too easy for him and utterly wiping out any chance of the sort of suffering!Doctor material that I like so much with Four. And as for the Whomobile - WTF? This is Doctor Who, not James Bond or Tomorrow's World! And where had it even come from anyway? Why would the Doctor build it? Bring back Bessie, I say.
Invasion is, of course, also a UNIT story: which is a setting I only really have a passing familiarity with from early Baker and isolated snippets of Pertwee. Obviously, in this particular case, it meant that the emotional impact of Yates' betrayal was rather lost on me, since although I know he's a regular character, I've only seen him once before in Claws..., and had almost no sense of him as a developed character. Still, for all that, the Doctor's confrontation with him towards the end of the story was compelling, as was the tension between the Brigadier and General Finch. Particularly fascinating was a sequence at the start of the sixth episode, when the Doctor was first saved from certain death in the jaws of a Tyrannosaurus Rex by the arrival of a Brontosaurus, only then to be saved seconds later from capture by General Finch by the arrival of the Brigadier. Would the Who team really have shoved such an outright visual metaphor into the middle of their story: UNIT personnel as dinosaurs? Well, given that the only straightforward, fully Earth-bound UNIT story still to go after this one is Robot, and that was fairly obviously designed to serve as a bridging episode with a familiar format while viewers got used to a new Doctor, I think we can safely say that they did.
New Who watch notes a nice little inter-play between the beginning of this story and the beginning of The Stolen Earth. Specifically, in Invasion, when the Doctor and Sarah Jane first get out of the TARDIS and find suburban London streets deserted, the Doctor speculates that this could be because it is a Sunday; while as they move around, one of the signs of strange goings-on which they encounter is an abandoned milk-float. Meanwhile in Stolen, the apparently perfectly normal scene which the Doctor and Donna see after they step out of the TARDIS is confirmed by a milkman to be part of a Saturday... but as soon as they leave, we see his float trembling as the first signs of impending disaster strike. Just one more reason why watching Classic Who and New Who alongside each other enhances both.
The random appearances of dinosaurs and (at one stage) a medieval peasant across central London also had something of the Torchwood about it (especially End of Days); while the scenes of Sarah Jane and the Doctor exploring a London empty of all but looters in the first episode reminded me of the beginning of 28 Days Later - and also gained quite a lot in terms of desolate atmosphere, I felt, from the fact that they only survive in black and white. Oh, and poor old Martin Jarvis. He played a perfectly good role as second villain, Butler - but thanks to Dead Ringers, I simply cannot take him seriously (if, that is, I ever could have done anyway). Never mind - I am sure he is laughing all the way to his next Radio 4 recording.
Third Doctor: Death to the Daleks
Between its nicely-judged location footage, its really-pretty-decent studio sets (especially in the City) and its simple-but-effective Exxilon costumes, this story definitely comes across as having vastly higher production values than Invasion.... I particularly liked the way the Exxilons were designed to blend in so well with their planet's surface topography, actually: they definitely score over the Ood for plausible adaptation to their environment.
The story is sound enough, and I appreciated the interesting things it did with the Daleks: rendering them (temporarily) impotent, forcing them to cooperate with both their most hated enemy and what they regard as primitive beings, and even eliciting sympathy a couple of times as they are hopelessly overpowered and killed. Kudos especially for the sight of the poor, hapless Dalek near the end who has allowed Sarah Jane to escape, and who spins madly round shouting "I have failed! Self-destruct!" before blowing himself to smithereens! It was also interesting to see the TARDIS temporarily deadened, and I thought that the Doctor and Bellal's progress through the traps and puzzles in the City was a lot better handled than the rush job given to the similar scenes in Pyramids of Mars.
Sarah Jane's character continues to grow beautifully. Obviously she's on an alien planet for the first time here, but although she is really, really scared when she's trapped in the darkened TARDIS console with an aggressive alien, by the middle of the second episode she is able to joke bravely in the face of danger as she and the Doctor head down the Exxilons' tunnel system to find out what nasty fate awaits them. In fact, I think it's when the Doctor smiles at this and puts his arm protectively around her that their relationship is really cemented. And, of course, there's also some nice light-hearted banter between them at the beginning, as they prepare for what they think will be a nice little trip to the planet Florana. Oh, and the sight of Pertwee here twirling a nice multi-coloured beach umbrella reminds me - is it a rule that all Doctors have to have a comedy scene with an umbrella at some point? I can certainly think of them for Two, Four and Six, while Seven goes without saying really: so only One and Five are needed for a full (Classic) house. Equivalent scenes for them on a postcard LJ comment, please.
On the down side, though, it's a bit hard to accept that the Daleks should really be vulnerable to the same plague as the human colonists, and hence suddenly have a hitherto-unmentioned driving need for Parrinium. I also Disapproved (in a stern and finger-wagging manner) of a scene in which it was suggested that the Exxilons' ancestors had taught the people of Earth how to build the stepped pyramids of Peru, and even the Doctor said that otherwise it was a mystery how such structures could have been created, when 'primitive man' clearly wasn't capable of building them. I would say, "Gah! Bad archaeology!", but frankly Bonekickers makes it look positively sane and responsible. Oh, and finally - I know that in episode four we find out that the red-and-white geometric floor inside the City is deadly, but at the end of episode three that hasn't been established yet, and hence it makes for possibly one of the worst Doctor Who cliff-hangers I've ever seen. "Behold! Our terrifying interior décor! Duh, duh, duuuhhh!" Erm - no.
Third Doctor: Invasion of the Dinosaurs
It's possibly a pity for all concerned that continuing onwards from The Time Warrior meant that my first post-Baker Who was Invasion of the Dinosaurs. I mean, I tried with the dinosaurs - I really did. I even managed to enjoy the fight between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Brontosaurus outside the Tube station because, hell - even if it was done with badly-realised puppets, it was still a dinosaur fight, dammit! But when I progressed onto Death to the Daleks afterwards, it became quite clear that the 'special' effects in Invasion... were not merely bad (which is forgiveable) - they were bad for the time (which is not).
And that's a shame, because actually there's some good material here. The plot is quite straightforwardly political, in a rather charmingly idealistic way that I also recognise from Baker's season 12. It might seem a little simplistic now, but basic respect is due to an early '70s children's programme which set out to show that Pollution Is Bad For Our Planet, but that extremists who try to foist their solution to the problem onto everyone else are, too. What's more, there are some very neat little details of structure and setting that gently lift the production up to a higher level. For example, the way that children's paintings on the wall in the school which UNIT seem to have co-opted as their command headquarters echo the 'pollution' theme of the story: sailing-boats on a blue ocean and cacti in the desert, next to factories and aeroplanes. Or subtle little parallels being drawn between the Doctor and Professor Whittaker (the evil!scientist behind it all), when the two of them are shown in close succession getting annoyed at people interrupting their work.
My primary reason for watching, of course, was Sarah Jane, and she entirely lived up to my expectations! I noticed right back when I was watching The Ark in Space that Sarah doesn't work quite as well in off-Earth stories as she does on her home territory, where she has her own resources and her own motivations to draw on - and that rule plays very much in her favour in Invasion.... In fact, her desire to get a good story out of what is going on gives her a much-needed and very plausible reason to continue hanging around the Doctor, without having to compromise her independence of character at this stage by having her trapped with him against her will on an alien planet. Instead we can see her busily throwing herself into the action, investigating leads, asking searching questions, working out people's nefarious schemes, pulling off tricks of her own and generally demanding better treatment for all. Yet still she retains the innocence and vulnerability that makes her believable and loveable, too - like her horrified reaction when she sees a burglar who has just been looting a property killed in front of her. That balance is a winning formula - as, of course, Donna has shown recently, too.
Sarah also made a sterling contribution to my ability to reconcile to a not-Baker!Doctor - especially Pertwee, whom I'd been distinctly put off thanks to a random viewing of The Claws of Axos. One of the first moments when I found myself actually quite liking him was when I saw the stab of concern go through him at hearing that Sarah had been taken off by the crooked and aggressive General Finch. And I liked the jokey, pally relationship that's starting to develop between the two of them, too, and especially her sweet little smile when he won her the right to stay in London with the UNIT crew by saying that she is presently acting as his assistant. Yes, he may be a bit more Deadly Serious about things than Four, but there's a warm side to him too which I'm starting to like. That said, I really don't like the Venusian aikido business: it's the equivalent of K-9's laser or Ten's sonic screwdriver, making things far too easy for him and utterly wiping out any chance of the sort of suffering!Doctor material that I like so much with Four. And as for the Whomobile - WTF? This is Doctor Who, not James Bond or Tomorrow's World! And where had it even come from anyway? Why would the Doctor build it? Bring back Bessie, I say.
Invasion is, of course, also a UNIT story: which is a setting I only really have a passing familiarity with from early Baker and isolated snippets of Pertwee. Obviously, in this particular case, it meant that the emotional impact of Yates' betrayal was rather lost on me, since although I know he's a regular character, I've only seen him once before in Claws..., and had almost no sense of him as a developed character. Still, for all that, the Doctor's confrontation with him towards the end of the story was compelling, as was the tension between the Brigadier and General Finch. Particularly fascinating was a sequence at the start of the sixth episode, when the Doctor was first saved from certain death in the jaws of a Tyrannosaurus Rex by the arrival of a Brontosaurus, only then to be saved seconds later from capture by General Finch by the arrival of the Brigadier. Would the Who team really have shoved such an outright visual metaphor into the middle of their story: UNIT personnel as dinosaurs? Well, given that the only straightforward, fully Earth-bound UNIT story still to go after this one is Robot, and that was fairly obviously designed to serve as a bridging episode with a familiar format while viewers got used to a new Doctor, I think we can safely say that they did.
New Who watch notes a nice little inter-play between the beginning of this story and the beginning of The Stolen Earth. Specifically, in Invasion, when the Doctor and Sarah Jane first get out of the TARDIS and find suburban London streets deserted, the Doctor speculates that this could be because it is a Sunday; while as they move around, one of the signs of strange goings-on which they encounter is an abandoned milk-float. Meanwhile in Stolen, the apparently perfectly normal scene which the Doctor and Donna see after they step out of the TARDIS is confirmed by a milkman to be part of a Saturday... but as soon as they leave, we see his float trembling as the first signs of impending disaster strike. Just one more reason why watching Classic Who and New Who alongside each other enhances both.
The random appearances of dinosaurs and (at one stage) a medieval peasant across central London also had something of the Torchwood about it (especially End of Days); while the scenes of Sarah Jane and the Doctor exploring a London empty of all but looters in the first episode reminded me of the beginning of 28 Days Later - and also gained quite a lot in terms of desolate atmosphere, I felt, from the fact that they only survive in black and white. Oh, and poor old Martin Jarvis. He played a perfectly good role as second villain, Butler - but thanks to Dead Ringers, I simply cannot take him seriously (if, that is, I ever could have done anyway). Never mind - I am sure he is laughing all the way to his next Radio 4 recording.
Third Doctor: Death to the Daleks
Between its nicely-judged location footage, its really-pretty-decent studio sets (especially in the City) and its simple-but-effective Exxilon costumes, this story definitely comes across as having vastly higher production values than Invasion.... I particularly liked the way the Exxilons were designed to blend in so well with their planet's surface topography, actually: they definitely score over the Ood for plausible adaptation to their environment.
The story is sound enough, and I appreciated the interesting things it did with the Daleks: rendering them (temporarily) impotent, forcing them to cooperate with both their most hated enemy and what they regard as primitive beings, and even eliciting sympathy a couple of times as they are hopelessly overpowered and killed. Kudos especially for the sight of the poor, hapless Dalek near the end who has allowed Sarah Jane to escape, and who spins madly round shouting "I have failed! Self-destruct!" before blowing himself to smithereens! It was also interesting to see the TARDIS temporarily deadened, and I thought that the Doctor and Bellal's progress through the traps and puzzles in the City was a lot better handled than the rush job given to the similar scenes in Pyramids of Mars.
Sarah Jane's character continues to grow beautifully. Obviously she's on an alien planet for the first time here, but although she is really, really scared when she's trapped in the darkened TARDIS console with an aggressive alien, by the middle of the second episode she is able to joke bravely in the face of danger as she and the Doctor head down the Exxilons' tunnel system to find out what nasty fate awaits them. In fact, I think it's when the Doctor smiles at this and puts his arm protectively around her that their relationship is really cemented. And, of course, there's also some nice light-hearted banter between them at the beginning, as they prepare for what they think will be a nice little trip to the planet Florana. Oh, and the sight of Pertwee here twirling a nice multi-coloured beach umbrella reminds me - is it a rule that all Doctors have to have a comedy scene with an umbrella at some point? I can certainly think of them for Two, Four and Six, while Seven goes without saying really: so only One and Five are needed for a full (Classic) house. Equivalent scenes for them on a postcard LJ comment, please.
On the down side, though, it's a bit hard to accept that the Daleks should really be vulnerable to the same plague as the human colonists, and hence suddenly have a hitherto-unmentioned driving need for Parrinium. I also Disapproved (in a stern and finger-wagging manner) of a scene in which it was suggested that the Exxilons' ancestors had taught the people of Earth how to build the stepped pyramids of Peru, and even the Doctor said that otherwise it was a mystery how such structures could have been created, when 'primitive man' clearly wasn't capable of building them. I would say, "Gah! Bad archaeology!", but frankly Bonekickers makes it look positively sane and responsible. Oh, and finally - I know that in episode four we find out that the red-and-white geometric floor inside the City is deadly, but at the end of episode three that hasn't been established yet, and hence it makes for possibly one of the worst Doctor Who cliff-hangers I've ever seen. "Behold! Our terrifying interior décor! Duh, duh, duuuhhh!" Erm - no.