Classic Who: The Daleks' Master Plan

[strange_complex]

I thought this story was better than the circumstances of its production might have suggested. It definitely varies in tone and quality, and wanders quite a long way away from the central plot at times, with the result that I began episode 12 no longer really caring what happened with the taranium core and the Time Destructor. But most of the

Comments

[thanatos_kalos]

The double-entendre in his statement to Steven that 'you seem to know all the queer people' probably wasn't intentional, but it made me LOL all the same. :-)

Wait until 'The Celestial Toymaker', where a 'sergeant' says he could make a man out of Steven...

[strange_complex]

Hee, sounds good. I should hopefully get to see that today, as I watched the first half of that story yesterday.

[anonymous]

You didn't mention that the actor who played Bret Vyon is Nicholas Courtney who has also acted the role of the Brigadier with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th doctors.

[strange_complex]

No, I didn't. I also didn't mention that Sara Kingdom was played by Jean Marsh, who had already played Lady Joanna in The Crusade, would go on to play Morgaine in Battlefield, is best known as Rose Buck in Upstairs, Downstairs and indeed was married to Jon Pertwee.

Those facts are freely available on Wikipedia, and I prefer to concentrate on expressing my own ideas and responses in these reviews, rather than just repeating all the same standard points which everybody makes. Have you ever heard anyone else say the things I've said here about meta-referentiality and the use of history in this story? I doubt it.

If you think you can do a better job of reviewing old Doctor Who stories, by all means get a livejournal account, put a name to your ideas, and be ready to stand by what you have written. Or are you too afraid of all the anonymous idiots who will swoop by to pick flies about what you haven't said, rather than responding intelligently to what you have said?

[swisstone]

Shannon Patrick Sullivan's entries on Myth Makers and Master Plan have rather more detail than when I was first researching Katarina (one of the reasons I want to go back to Myth Makers). It seems clear that the production team of John Wiles and Donald Tosh had a problem - they wanted to get rid of Maureen O'Brien as soon as possible - but no good idea about how to solve it.

Part of the brilliance of Sara Kingdom is the brilliance of Jean Marsh, and to be honest, if the role had been made a recurring one, I don't think Marsh would have done it.

BTW, I suspect you mean The Sontaran Experiment.

[strange_complex]

Oh, that's a useful site, isn't it? I think I've happened on it occasionally before, but have now bookmarked it for more systematic use. Thanks for the link.

Jean Marsh is, of course, awesome, and I guess you're probably right that she had other things to be getting on with.

And yes, I obviously do mean Experiment, not Stratagem - thanks for spotting that.