Doctor Who 8.01 Terror of the Autons
MASTER: "You're bluffing on an empty hand, Doctor."
DOCTOR: "I'm not bluffing. And my hand, as you can see, is not empty."
Overview
I decided to skip over the 7-part season 7 finale, Inferno, for now and jump straight into the slightly more viewer-friendly 4-part season 8 opener, Terror of the Autons. Functioning in part as a sequel to the season 7 premiere, Spearhead from Space, and in part as a springboard to the new season, with the introduction of a new recurring adversary in the form of the Master - making his first ever appearance on the show - this story sees the Third Doctor still Earth-bound, still at UNIT, but exchanging his highly qualified scientist assistant Liz Shaw for the younger, less qualified and much fluffier Jo Grant, who got the job largely because she has relatives in high places, but is determined to prove herself. And because producers felt there was more scope in a character who'd have to ask the Doctor to explain everything than in one who could hold her own with him as a scientist. A third new character is also introduced in this story in the form of UNIT's Captain Mike Yates as the Brigadier's right hand man - a new character to us, that is, although dialogue indicates that he is supposed to have been there all along. In addition, this is the first adventure in which Sergeant Benton is a fully fledged recurring character, rather than the occasional bit player he has been in his previous appearances.
It is interesting to compare this story to Spearhead from Space, since the two are directly linked, not just as consecutive season openers but also by featuring Auton invasions, the one following on from the last. Both are 4-part stories that feel relatively fast-paced and dynamic compared with the longer 6/7-part stories that surround them, and both make a point of giving plenty of screen-time to new characters, to establish them in the minds of viewers. There is a definite tonal change, though. Despite having its lighter moments, Spearhead from Space feels quite dry and dark and rather more grown-up when considered alongside Terror of the Autons, which somehow achieves a considerably lighter tone despite what is at times quite sinister and creepy subject matter!
Observations
Random thoughts while watching:
The story opens at a proper old-fashioned 1970s circus of the kind that featured performing animals. It loses points immediately for a rather prominent shot of caged lions. Luckily it has plenty else to recommend it. Tardis engines are heard, and so accustomed are we to hearing them that it takes a moment for the brain to catch up and remember that this is the Earthbound UNIT era, the Doctor's Tardis is grounded, he can't fly it - and he has never been able to camouflage it in the way that this Tardis is instantly camouflaged, appearing in the form of a horsebox. Then the door opens and the Master steps out - the original Master, played by Roger Delgado. This is his very first appearance on the show. He gets off to a good start, hypnotising the very first person he sees just by staring at him, to get the unfortunate man to commit a serious crime on his behalf. Well, I suppose he might as well start as he intends to go on.
Meanwhile over at UNIT HQ, the Doctor is still engrossed in his ongoing project to get the Tardis functional again. You've got to give him points for persistence, at least. I mean, whatever the Time Lords did to disable it, it seems safe to say that they'd have made sure it isn't going to be something the Doctor can undo with whatever resources are available to him on Earth in 1971, but he isn't about to let that stop him trying!
The Third Doctor seems to be in a permanently bad mood, in every adventure so far. He was in a foul mood for the whole of season 7 and he's in a foul mood again in this story, grumbling and griping at everyone who crosses his path. He has a lot in common with the First Doctor in that regard, I suppose - One also tended to be rather crotchety. Three has a nice line in snark and is very charming when he chooses to be, but his disdainful arrogance can be rather hard to take at times.
The Doctor's new assistant Jo Grant gets off to rather a bad start with him. Very young, naïve and a bit ditzy, she certainly makes for a contrast with the capable and highly qualified Liz Shaw. She claims, however, to be a fully qualified agent (of what?), trained in cryptology, safe breaking and explosives; we later learn that she is also a gifted escapologist (always a handy skill on this show) and usually carries a set of skeleton keys somewhere about her person. So she has useful skills, she's just very, very inexperienced. The Doctor does not initially take to her, mostly because he is still in a snit about a) being stuck on Earth, and b) Liz deciding to leave him to continue her work at Cambridge, but they soon strike up a good rapport. Jo is as cute as a bug, played with real charm by Katy Manning, and brings all the Doctor's latent paternal instincts to the fore - which, I suspect, was the point. We need to see Three's softer side in their interactions, to be shown that he can and does care about people, as he otherwise spends so much of his time being aloof and ungracious.
I'm glad we are at least told where Liz has gone, since she has vanished between seasons. The off-screen reasoning for getting rid of the character might leave something of a sour taste in the mouth (she was considered too clever and capable, detracting from the Doctor), but it makes sense for the character that she'd get bored of standing in the Doctor's shadow and would want to return to the research she was dragged away from to join UNIT in the first place. It isn't as if she ever really wanted to be there - she only stayed as long as she did because of the Doctor.
At the end of Spearhead from Space, the Doctor had a conversation with the Brigadier about how it was entirely possible that the Nestenes might very well attempt a second invasion. This story follows on smoothly from that open-ended premise, as the Master steals the Nestene energy unit left over from that story and uses it to summon that second invasion, for mischievous reasons of his own. The Doctor bitterly recriminates both the Brigadier for allowing the energy unit to leave UNIT premises and himself for not destroying it when he had the chance. As for me, I appreciate the continuity!
At least in Earth-based stories like this, the clumsy 1970s technology is period-appropriate.
A lot of the line readings in this one are very stagey, very theatrical. They could have used a bit more rehearsal time to get some of the dialogue a little more natural sounding, perhaps.
When sabotage at a radio telescope is linked to the stolen energy unit and UNIT hasten to investigate, I really like that the Doctor goes straight to examine the scene of crime rather than waste time being introduced to the director, as protocol dictates. The Brigadier has to observe such procedure because he is tied to the system, but the Doctor feels no pressure to do likewise. He marches to the beat of his own drum and always has!
Before the Doctor can investigate, however, he is rather startled by the unexpected arrival of a Time Lord, who pretty much just materialises in mid air with a burst of Tardis engine sound but minus any actual Tardis. That's a nifty trick, if you can do it!
The unnamed Time Lord has come to give the Doctor a warning about the Master having turned up on Earth. Their conversation is packed full of exposition as to who the Master is and the disdain the Doctor feels for him, clearly already knowing him well of old - one time classmates and academic rivals, is the gist. The Time Lord explains that since the Master has come to Earth and is likely to be gunning for the Doctor as a potential obstacle to his nefarious plots, the tribunal that exiled the Doctor to Earth felt he should be warned. Because he is effectively in prison, trapped here as he is, that makes his safety and wellbeing their responsibility, I suppose. Sort of. "You are incorrigibly meddlesome, Doctor, but we've always felt that your hearts are in the right places," the delegate smarms. That's slightly revisionist history, I feel, as the First Doctor didn't come across as always having been meddlesome - he had a far more hands-off approach to his travels than his successors, at least in the beginning - and the tribunal that exiled the Doctor didn't seem to appreciate his good intentions at all, it cared only that he had broken their rules. It is noticeable that those rules clearly still stand, as for all that the Time Lords know that the Master has come to Earth with sinister intentions, they are not prepared to take action against him, beyond giving the Doctor the heads up. It seems terribly unfair that the Doctor should be punished for interfering to help people, while the Master goes around summoning alien invasions upon unsuspecting planets, which is surely a far worse form of interference, and the Time Lords do nothing to restrain him! Maybe they feel that since the Doctor is in situ and is so meddlesome anyway, they can leave the Master for him to deal with and thus keep their hands clean. Well, if that was their intention, it kind of works!
Is the Doctor still wearing the cape he stole way back in Spearhead from Space, or did he just like it so much that he acquired another one just like it?
I'm not overly impressed by the direction for this story. A lot of scenes are really clumsily blocked. And there is so, so much primitive Chroma key compositing going on! It gets distracting after a while. But on the other hand, the show deserves its props for helping to pioneer the technique, as it was early experimentation like this that made today's virtually invisible green-screen techniques possible.
One of the missing scientists from the radio telescope is quickly located inside his lunch box. The Master has miniaturised him. So miniaturisation was established this early on as the Master's trademark, then. Nasty!
Ah, Mike Yates. It makes more sense for the Brigadier to have a captain than Sergeant Benton as his adjutant, hence the new recurring role. And Mike seems rather sweet and fairly capable and all. But seriously, I don't think I've ever seen a less soldierly soldier portrayed on any show ever, including Benton! He doesn't so much as attempt a properly military walk…
When Jo asks what a Nestene is, the Doctor tells her to ask Mike Yates, since he had the job of cleaning up the mess last time. So we are meant to believe that Mike has been with UNIT all along and was involved with the previous Nestene invasion in Spearhead from Space, even though we have never seen him before. Of course, having referred the question to him, the Doctor then answers it himself anyway, because that's just who the Third Doctor is. And the exposition provides a useful reminder for viewers who may not remember the Autons all that well, which is the value of bringing in Jo in place of Liz, who would remember them only too well and therefore not need the lecture.
Jo and Mike are very flirty throughout this story. Evidently the show's producers were toying with the idea of a romance, remembering how well certain previous male-female companion pairings had gone across with viewers and hoping to push the boundaries a little further with these two. The proposed romance never came to anything in the end, and Mike never became a proper companion, although he remained a recurring character for a good few seasons, but the flirtiness with Jo in this story really is pronounced.
I like that having disarmed the bomb the Master left at the radio telescope as a booby trap, the Doctor then makes sure it is utterly destroyed before any human scientists can get hold of it and try their hand at reverse engineering. "The weapons that you have on Earth are quite nasty enough as it is," he sternly tells the Brigadier. Well, quite.
I'm a bit confused as to why Jo suddenly appears at a plastics factory, trying her hand at a bit of spying. She wants to make herself useful, sure, but the last we heard she was offering to make a list of plastics factories to be investigated - there's a bit of a jump from there to actually going out in the field to do that investigating all by herself, probably unauthorised! Also, it's a bit coincidental that she happens to visit the exact plastics factory where the Master is taking over production. And then she proves herself to be a bit of a clutz and in no time at all has been found and hypnotised by the Master into taking a bomb back to UNIT HQ, where she proceeds to knock Mike Yates to the ground (girl's stronger than she looks! Or is more that Mike is a bit of a weed?) so that she can prime said bomb and attempt to blow everyone up - all on her first day at work! It isn't the most auspicious start to her career with UNIT, it's gotta be said.
Of course, since the Doctor is brilliant and perceptive and whatnot, he saves the day in the nick of time by chucking the bomb out of the window and into a canal, where it proceeds to blow up a few fish and startle a few ducks. I am very amused by the way Sergeant Benton's mind immediately goes to the complaints he is certain to have to field as a result and the Doctor has to remind him that, hello, being blown to bits would have been worse!
With Jo temporarily catatonic in the wake of her attempted act of terrorism, the Doctor gets to spout a lot of impressive-sounding psychobabble about post-hypnotic alienation and schizoid dissociation. It's all surprisingly technical for Doctor Who.
The Master murders a sceptical employee at the plastics factory by having him sit in a self-inflating plastic chair which then proceeds to suffocate him. Living plastic, ahoy! This is what makes the Autons so creepy - they take ordinary, everyday items (inflatable chairs weren't all that new in 1971, were they?) and turn them into semi-sentient objects of dread! Add to that the Master's creativity and the creep factor increases tenfold - he is far, far more sadistically imaginative than they are.
This adventure toys with the notion of giving us an interesting character story about hypnotised plastics factory manager Rex Farrell (played by Michael Wisher, who would go on to play Davros in Genesis of the Daleks) and his retired father, who built the business up from scratch and doesn't entirely trust his son to run it properly in his stead - that's the kind of familial character conflict I always appreciate. Alas, it doesn't really come to anything, as Farrell Sr. is dead within a few short scenes. The Master builds up quite a body count in this story - again, starting as he intends to go on!
The ongoing tension between the Doctor and the Brigadier is far more satisfying, though, as this has been going on ever since the Doctor joined UNIT and is unlikely to ever be resolved. It makes for a fascinating relationship between the two, as they work together so closely and have a lot of respect and affection for one another, yet this fundamental difference in outlook always hangs between them. The practical-minded Brigadier is a soldier with military instincts, shoot first and ask questions later; the Doctor is a scientist and a pacifist preferring to find creative, non-violent solutions wherever possible. Holding such opposing outlooks, it is hardly surprising that they butt heads so often, as they do throughout this story. It doesn't help that the Doctor intensely does not want to be here and as a result doesn't always take UNIT investigations seriously, regarding Earth's petty problems as somewhat beneath him, no matter how critical they appear to be from a human perspective.
The plastic troll doll thingy that comes to life and murders Farrell Sr. is very, very creepy-looking. I bet that one scared the kids!
When another lead is turned up, the Doctor takes a little trip to the circus to investigate, unaccompanied because he is in a grumpy mood and is taking it out on UNIT. We are shown a few random establishing shots of performing elephants, which make me as grumpy as the Doctor. And then the Doctor gets himself captured by some of the Master's hypnotised henchmen, because it wouldn't be Doctor Who if the Doctor wasn't captured and locked up at least once. He uses his John Smith alias again, in case we'd forgotten that that's the name he isn't really going by but pulls out when it proves useful. And then Jo proves herself to be useful too by following him against orders, raising the alarm when she sees him captured, and then rescuing him without waiting for backup. They don't escape very far, but, you know, good for Jo!
As they escape, Jo is confronted by what is probably her first corpse. She might as well get used to it now. She is going to encounter a lot worse than that, hanging out with the Doctor.
After escaping from the hypnotised circus folk, the Doctor and Jo allow themselves to be apprehended by Autons disguised as policemen, which isn't their brightest move ever. It takes the Doctor a terribly long time to notice he's been abducted, as well, as his attention is focused on a component he has stolen from the Master's Tardis. The moment he finally does notice that the policemen are Autons is the episode two cliffhanger - about which questions were raised in the House of Commons! It was very shocking, in 1971, for a family entertainment programme like Doctor Who to portray evil monsters masquerading as policemen, whom children were supposed to be encouraged to trust!
The Doctor being a bit slow on the uptake about the Auton policemen is more or less cancelled out by the Autons being remarkably slow to start shooting when he and Jo jump out of the car and sprint for cover (in the middle of a ubiquitous Doctor Who quarry, only this one actually is playing a quarry).
I am really, really not impressed by the car used by the Brigadier, Yates and a random red shirt UNIT soldier to come dashing to the rescue. It's an Austin Maxi, I believe. You'd think UNIT could muster up something a bit more robust and military than that.
And another UNIT red shirt bites the dust. Life expectancy at that organisation really isn't good!
Since bullets make no impression on Autons, Mike Yates thinks fast and drives the car straight into one, sending it flying over the edge of a cliff. It is a fantastic stunt - it really is a stunt man, not a dummy, who goes tumbling head over heels down that long, steep slope; when he hits bottom, he lies still just for a moment and then gets straight back up. In full Auton get-up, it's very scary, and all the more impressive since the stunt was achieved more accidentally than deliberately - the car hit the stuntman a tad harder than it was meant to, so that his fall was real, rather than controlled. But he wasn't (seriously) hurt and it looked absolutely awesome, so the director kept it in.
Back at UNIT HQ, the Brigadier holds a briefing session for a very select few, namely the Doctor, Jo and Mike Yates. Even Benton isn't invited. The Doctor behaves outrageously throughout. Visibly bored, he gets up and wanders over to his Tardis mid-briefing with the component he stole from the Master earlier, and becomes appallingly rude when the Brigadier calls him to order. For all his disgruntled grumblings to Jo later, when they are alone, about the ignorance of the military mind, the main reason for his petulance is clear: he now has in his possession a component that he believes will restore full functionality to his Tardis and therefore can no longer be bothered even trying to feign interest in Earth's trivial little alien invasion problems. Jo wins huge brownie points for not being afraid of her glowering, temperamental new boss, instead calling him out on being so rude and ungracious when the Brigadier just saved his life. Although suitably chastened, he remains surly, sniffing that he'll apologise later…if he has time. Just moments later he takes the stolen component into the Tardis, and although he assures Jo that he intends only to make a test flight, the goodbye that he bids her has a note of finality about it. It seems clear that he really doesn't have any intention of coming back, and that despite knowing that the Master is here and a full-blown Nestene invasion is imminent. The Third Doctor really is a piece of work! Then again, running away isn't exactly out of character for him; he's been running away from something ever since his abrupt departure from Gallifrey in the first place, and avoids all trappings of responsibility wherever possible. He usually sticks around long enough to resolve whatever threat is at large first, though. Luckily for Earth, the Master's Tardis is a newer version than the Doctor's, and the hardware proves incompatible. The Doctor throws quite the tantrum about this, his hopes and dreams of escaping exile shattered once again. I'd feel sorrier for him if he hadn't been prepared to abandon the planet to its doom just so he could taste freedom a little sooner.
The Doctor muses that a side effect of his sabotage of the Master's Tardis is that the Master is now also effectively trapped on Earth. Since he is a sadistic, sociopathic megalomaniac, this is not as amusing a notion as the Doctor seems to find it!
Okay, I really don't know what the logic is behind putting enormous carnival masks over the regular plastic Auton heads, but the end result is way creepy. Especially when they are dressed in bright yellow and are handing out plastic flowers.
This is a story where time is allowed to pass, as we jump forward slightly in time to see the Doctor throwing another hissy fit about the fact that the investigation has been going on for days now and is running cold, with no new leads turning up. He continues to take his pique out on UNIT, which bugs me because for all that the ideological differences he has with a military organisation such as UNIT are blatantly obvious, at the end of the day UNIT took him in when he had nowhere to go, they have given him friendship and shelter to sit out his exile in relative comfort, provided him with resources to work on his Tardis, and the Brigadier has personally protected his anonymity and alien origins on numerous occasions in the face of hard questioning. And all they ask in return is that he take their investigations seriously and help them out when they face alien invasions of this nature. Militaristic and a bit mickey mouse they might be, but they really don't deserve all the name-calling he throws at them in this story!
The Doctor declares that the Master is too conceited to give up. I love the little eye roll Jo gives when she hears this, seeing only too clearly the irony in the arrogant Doctor calling the Master conceited - she's got his measure already!
The Brigadier brings a man from the Ministry to talk to the Doctor about what he calls a 'rather alarming story'. Now, most incarnations of the Doctor would assume that the Brigadier wouldn't have brought this man to talk to him without a good reason and that therefore this alarming story must be both relevant and important. But Three is still in a foul mood and therefore goes on the attack at once, griping that he isn't in the mood for stories and sniping sourly at the Ministry man at length about his credentials, causing the man to seriously doubt that the Brigadier has brought him to the right person to be able to deal with his problem. I am gratified that in the course of his petty sniping, the Doctor defends the Brigadier wholeheartedly as being a busy man who shouldn't be troubled by the Ministry's petty concerns (he knows that the Brigadier is tied up in bureaucracy a lot of the time, and resents it on his behalf), but the trouble is that he doesn't know that this is a petty concern because he hasn't let the man speak! He has no idea what information this man has or how important it is or isn't. He is just being rude for the sake of being rude - and he really is outrageously rude. And then after all that it turns out that Mr Brownrose from the Ministry really does have important information after all, providing crucial evidence that leads their investigation to Farrell and his plastics factory, at last. All of which makes the Doctor's rudeness to the man both pointless and rather churlish.
As a character note for the Doctor, though, his attitude really drives home how enormously frustrated he is about his ongoing exile on a single planet at a single time, how desperately he yearns for the freedom to travel the universe once more. I suppose that also contributes to his amusement at similarly trapping the Master - he isn't looking at that situation from the perspective of a human whose planet has just gained an enormously powerful sociopath, he is looking at it from the perspective of a Time Lord in exile who has just seen a fellow Time Lord similarly imprisoned and knows he is no longer alone.
I am rather amused by the Doctor performing a post mortem on a large plastic troll doll!
The Brigadier, usually so calm in the midst of any storm, appears to be catching the Doctor's bad mood - hardly surprising, given the way the Doctor has been behaving in this story; he'd wear on anyone's nerves with that attitude! There is a rather fabulous little bicker-fest in which the Brigadier has finally had enough of the Doctor's irritable, autocratic attitude and snaps back, reminding him that this is a UNIT operation and he can't keep charging off by himself whenever he feels like it, and then Mike Yates chips in, volunteering to accompany the Doctor on an investigation of the plastics factory, only to get his head chewed off by the Brigadier, who intends to go himself to both get out from behind his desk and keep a sharp eye on the Doctor, and it just all feels very realistic. In stress situations people do take their frustrations out on one another, so it feels completely natural that these characters should be getting on each other's nerves and reacting to one another based on the high pressure situation they are in.
Apparently, safe cracking is one of the Third Doctor's skills. And he doesn't even need the sonic screwdriver to do it!
The Master has rigged the Doctor's telephone with a Nestene living plastic flex - the phone conversation where he triggers that trap is the first direct contact between the two renegade Time Lords in the story. And my goodness, Jon Pertwee doesn't half gurn! Luckily, the Brigadier isn't far away and dashes back to save him.
Man, I love how straight Nicholas Courtney always plays the Brigadier. No matter how humorous or absurd the line, he always plays it absolutely down the line.
I like it when we get to see the Doctor play with science.
I am very impressed that the Nestenes are able to produce plastic that crumbles away to nothing when breathed on. I mean, the breathing on thing might make it a little too fragile to be practical as more than a means of suffocating someone while leaving no trace, but I very much like the idea of bio-degradable plastic, which would solve a stack of Earth's ecological problems in one fell swoop!
For a story about an Auton invasion, the Autons really do play a very minor role - we are shown just enough to know that they are only going along with the Master for as long as suits their purposes as they have plans of their own, but beyond that they are very peripheral figures. This story is all about establishing the Master as the Doctor's nemesis, a real Moriarty figure.
With all the soldier-folk off planning an airstrike to knock out the bus full of Autons, the Master just waltzes into UNIT HQ for a face-to-face with the Doctor, their very first on-screen confrontation. How he got past security I am not going to ask. I suspect he probably shot and miniaturised any soldier who stood in his way!
The Doctor's relationship with the Master over the years has always been fascinating, being as much about how alike they are as it is about their profound differences, and this story is where it all began - the Master was specifically designed, in fact, as an equal and opposite version of the Doctor's own core personality. Their interaction throughout the story is certainly more about game playing than it is about serious, to the death enmity. Each enjoys the challenge that the other represents, each understands the other far better than he'd ever admit, and as mutual renegades from their own people they are, in a sense, kindred spirits - although again, neither would ever admit that. This has been their dynamic throughout the show, these two brilliant minds as much drawn to one another as they are repulsed, and that intriguing dynamic is already in full force here, in their very first on-screen meeting in the Master's very first story.
Of course, Jo enters the room at exactly the wrong moment to break the stalemate, first providing the Master with a useful hostage to hold over the Doctor's head and then blurting out top secret information about the planned air strike. She's having as many misses as hits in this her first adventure.
The Doctor and Jo provide useful hostages for the Master to use to force UNIT to call off their airstrike at the very last second, thus sparing the production team from having to attempt to portray said airstrike.
Handy life lesson for all evil bad guys out there - never leave the Doctor tied up in the foot well of a car, as he will use the brake pads to send a Morse message to his UNIT comrades nearby. Because for all that he complains about them at length, he is quite prepared to make use of them when it suits!
Another handy life lesson for all evil bad guys out there - be very careful when tying up Jo Grant, as she is quite the escapologist!
I am always so very amused by the UNIT boys playing at soldier! It wouldn't be a proper UNIT story without a load of shooting, however pointless that shooting might be. This story racks up quite the impressive death toll for UNIT red shirts. They seem to drop like flies in their final confrontation with the Autons, who, of course, are impervious to bullets. But it doesn't matter how pointless the shooting might be, UNIT like to let fly with the bullets regardless!
There's a nicely tense climax to the story as the Master appropriates a radio telescope to summon the rest of the Nestenes, but the Doctor then persuades him to switch sides ludicrously easily. I mean, he has spent this entire story plotting to make this invasion possible, and then with a single sentence the Doctor talks him into betraying his allies and working together to disperse their invasion force even as it beams in. This, I suppose, tells us something about the Master, right up front. He hadn't really thought the plan through to its logical conclusion - that the Nestenes were more likely to dispose of him once they arrived than to reward him - because the endgame was never what was important to him. He is just playing games because it amuses him, so it means nothing to him to cut his losses with this game and then move on to the next. This is also the reason he is never quite able to bring himself to actually kill the Doctor in any of their encounters, although he comes close plenty of times - he enjoys the challenge of their rivalry too much, and if the Doctor were killed, the game would be over and then what would he do for amusement?
The Nestene invasion is thwarted by the Doctor and the Master changing the polarity of something or other. But not the neutron flow, not yet - we are still waiting for that catch phrase to emerge.
The Autons are defeated and the Nestene invasion is thwarted, but the Master has escaped - although he remains trapped on Earth, since the Doctor still has the dematerialisation circuit from his Tardis. Now, the Master is a sociopath. A lot of people have died as a result of his machinations in this story. For as long as he remains on Earth, free to devise similarly nefarious schemes, many more people are likely to die. Yet the Doctor admits that he is rather looking forward to locking horns with his adversary once again. Because, once again, he is not looking at this situation from a human perspective, worried about the potential loss of life; he is looking at it as a Time Lord in exile, who has been bored rigid by his imprisonment on this planet and now has the prospect of an ongoing rivalry with a mind equal to his own to keep him occupied and amused. I can understand why he feels that way. But it doesn't endear him to me!
Quotable Quotes
JO: "I'm your new assistant."
DOCTOR: "Oh, no."
BRIGADIER: "What you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes and to tell you how brilliant you are. Miss Grant will fulfil that function admirably."
TIME LORD: "I am travelling incognito."
DOCTOR: "Oh? Why?"
TIME LORD: "We Time Lords don't care to be conspicuous. Some of us, that is."
DOCTOR: "Look, if you've come down merely to be rude -"
TIME LORD: "I came to warn you. An old acquaintance has arrived on this planet."
DOCTOR: "Oh? One of our people?"
TIME LORD: "The Master."
DOCTOR: "That jackanapes! All he ever does is cause trouble."
TIME LORD: "He'll certainly try to kill you, Doctor. The tribunal thought that you ought to be made aware of your danger."
DOCTOR: "How very kind of them."
TIME LORD: "You are incorrigibly meddlesome, Doctor, but we've always felt that your hearts are in the right places. But be careful. The Master has learnt a great deal since you last met him."
DOCTOR: "I refuse to be worried by a renegade like the Master. He's an unimaginative plodder."
TIME LORD: "His degree in cosmic science was of a higher class than yours."
DOCTOR: "Yes, well, er, yes, well, I, I was a late developer."
TIME LORD: "Such an amusing idea."
DOCTOR: "Well, you'd better think of a witty way of dealing with it."
DOCTOR: "I thought you took an A-Level in science."
JO: "I didn't say I passed."
YATES: "What do you think, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "I still am."
YATES: "Huh?"
DOCTOR: "Thinking."
YATES: "She's been hypnotised?"
DOCTOR: "Well, of course. Why else do you think she tried to blow us all to pieces?"
DOCTOR: "You know, Brigadier, your methods have all the refined subtlety of a bull in a china shop."
DOCTOR: "What's your friend's name?"
ROSSINI: "His name's none of your business."
DOCTOR: "A strange name."
ROSSINI: "Come, come, Doctor. Gentlemen don't discuss money."
DOCTOR: "Nonsense. Gentlemen never talk about anything else."
FARRELL: "And you're not angry?"
MASTER: "Because the Doctor's escaped again? No. He's an interesting adversary. I admire him in many ways."
FARRELL: "But you still intend to destroy him?"
MASTER: "Of course and the more he struggles to postpone the moment, the greater the ultimate satisfaction."
JO: "What on earth is he doing inside a horsebox?"
DOCTOR: "It isn't exactly a horsebox. It just happens to look like one."
JO: "You mean there isn't a horse inside."
DOCTOR: "No more than there's a policeman inside my police box."
DOCTOR: "Do you know, Jo, I sometimes think that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
JO: "You're not very grateful, are you?"
DOCTOR: "What? For having my time wasted?"
JO: "He did save our lives, you know."
JO: "Doctor, stop being childish."
DOCTOR: "What's wrong with being childish? I like being childish."
DOCTOR: "I think you'll find, sir, that I'm qualified to deal with practically everything, if I choose."
BRIGADIER: "Now just a moment, Doctor. I'm aware for your preference for acting as a one-man band, but this does happen to be a UNIT operation."
DOCTOR: "It's plastic, Brigadier, and any plastic artefact, anything at all, can, in the Nestene sense of the word, be alive."
BRIGADIER: "I've got the RAF to lay on a rocket strike. In a few hours time, that coach should be a pile of scrap iron."
DOCTOR: "The military mind at its most scintillating. Faced with a problem they blast it off the face of the earth."
DOCTOR: "You've come here to kill me, of course."
MASTER: "But not without considerable regret."
DOCTOR: "How very comforting."
MASTER: "You see, Doctor, you're my intellectual equal. Almost. I have so few worth opponents. When they've gone, I always miss them."
MASTER: "I see you've been working on the Nestene autojet. My own small contribution to their invasion plan."
DOCTOR: "Vicious, complicated and inefficient. Typical of your way of thinking."
MASTER: "Now, come, come, Doctor. Death is always more frightening when it strikes invisibly."
MASTER: "You're bluffing on an empty hand, Doctor."
DOCTOR: "I'm not bluffing and my hand, as you can see, is not empty."
MASTER: "I apologise for your last moments on earth being so uncomfortable, Doctor."
BRIGADIER: "Can't you do anything, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Not unless we change the polarity."
BRIGADIER: "Think he'll turn up again, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Yes, bound to."
JO: "You don't seem very worried about it."
DOCTOR: "I'm not. As a matter of fact, Jo, I'm rather looking forward to it."
The Verdict
Overall and taken as a whole, Three is never going to be my favourite incarnation of the Doctor but I appreciate the pace and continuity of this adventure, which is a decent introduction to a new season and to several new characters, although the material deserved a rather grittier tone than it was given.
DOCTOR: "I'm not bluffing. And my hand, as you can see, is not empty."
Overview
I decided to skip over the 7-part season 7 finale, Inferno, for now and jump straight into the slightly more viewer-friendly 4-part season 8 opener, Terror of the Autons. Functioning in part as a sequel to the season 7 premiere, Spearhead from Space, and in part as a springboard to the new season, with the introduction of a new recurring adversary in the form of the Master - making his first ever appearance on the show - this story sees the Third Doctor still Earth-bound, still at UNIT, but exchanging his highly qualified scientist assistant Liz Shaw for the younger, less qualified and much fluffier Jo Grant, who got the job largely because she has relatives in high places, but is determined to prove herself. And because producers felt there was more scope in a character who'd have to ask the Doctor to explain everything than in one who could hold her own with him as a scientist. A third new character is also introduced in this story in the form of UNIT's Captain Mike Yates as the Brigadier's right hand man - a new character to us, that is, although dialogue indicates that he is supposed to have been there all along. In addition, this is the first adventure in which Sergeant Benton is a fully fledged recurring character, rather than the occasional bit player he has been in his previous appearances.
It is interesting to compare this story to Spearhead from Space, since the two are directly linked, not just as consecutive season openers but also by featuring Auton invasions, the one following on from the last. Both are 4-part stories that feel relatively fast-paced and dynamic compared with the longer 6/7-part stories that surround them, and both make a point of giving plenty of screen-time to new characters, to establish them in the minds of viewers. There is a definite tonal change, though. Despite having its lighter moments, Spearhead from Space feels quite dry and dark and rather more grown-up when considered alongside Terror of the Autons, which somehow achieves a considerably lighter tone despite what is at times quite sinister and creepy subject matter!
Observations
Random thoughts while watching:
The story opens at a proper old-fashioned 1970s circus of the kind that featured performing animals. It loses points immediately for a rather prominent shot of caged lions. Luckily it has plenty else to recommend it. Tardis engines are heard, and so accustomed are we to hearing them that it takes a moment for the brain to catch up and remember that this is the Earthbound UNIT era, the Doctor's Tardis is grounded, he can't fly it - and he has never been able to camouflage it in the way that this Tardis is instantly camouflaged, appearing in the form of a horsebox. Then the door opens and the Master steps out - the original Master, played by Roger Delgado. This is his very first appearance on the show. He gets off to a good start, hypnotising the very first person he sees just by staring at him, to get the unfortunate man to commit a serious crime on his behalf. Well, I suppose he might as well start as he intends to go on.
Meanwhile over at UNIT HQ, the Doctor is still engrossed in his ongoing project to get the Tardis functional again. You've got to give him points for persistence, at least. I mean, whatever the Time Lords did to disable it, it seems safe to say that they'd have made sure it isn't going to be something the Doctor can undo with whatever resources are available to him on Earth in 1971, but he isn't about to let that stop him trying!
The Third Doctor seems to be in a permanently bad mood, in every adventure so far. He was in a foul mood for the whole of season 7 and he's in a foul mood again in this story, grumbling and griping at everyone who crosses his path. He has a lot in common with the First Doctor in that regard, I suppose - One also tended to be rather crotchety. Three has a nice line in snark and is very charming when he chooses to be, but his disdainful arrogance can be rather hard to take at times.
The Doctor's new assistant Jo Grant gets off to rather a bad start with him. Very young, naïve and a bit ditzy, she certainly makes for a contrast with the capable and highly qualified Liz Shaw. She claims, however, to be a fully qualified agent (of what?), trained in cryptology, safe breaking and explosives; we later learn that she is also a gifted escapologist (always a handy skill on this show) and usually carries a set of skeleton keys somewhere about her person. So she has useful skills, she's just very, very inexperienced. The Doctor does not initially take to her, mostly because he is still in a snit about a) being stuck on Earth, and b) Liz deciding to leave him to continue her work at Cambridge, but they soon strike up a good rapport. Jo is as cute as a bug, played with real charm by Katy Manning, and brings all the Doctor's latent paternal instincts to the fore - which, I suspect, was the point. We need to see Three's softer side in their interactions, to be shown that he can and does care about people, as he otherwise spends so much of his time being aloof and ungracious.
I'm glad we are at least told where Liz has gone, since she has vanished between seasons. The off-screen reasoning for getting rid of the character might leave something of a sour taste in the mouth (she was considered too clever and capable, detracting from the Doctor), but it makes sense for the character that she'd get bored of standing in the Doctor's shadow and would want to return to the research she was dragged away from to join UNIT in the first place. It isn't as if she ever really wanted to be there - she only stayed as long as she did because of the Doctor.
At the end of Spearhead from Space, the Doctor had a conversation with the Brigadier about how it was entirely possible that the Nestenes might very well attempt a second invasion. This story follows on smoothly from that open-ended premise, as the Master steals the Nestene energy unit left over from that story and uses it to summon that second invasion, for mischievous reasons of his own. The Doctor bitterly recriminates both the Brigadier for allowing the energy unit to leave UNIT premises and himself for not destroying it when he had the chance. As for me, I appreciate the continuity!
At least in Earth-based stories like this, the clumsy 1970s technology is period-appropriate.
A lot of the line readings in this one are very stagey, very theatrical. They could have used a bit more rehearsal time to get some of the dialogue a little more natural sounding, perhaps.
When sabotage at a radio telescope is linked to the stolen energy unit and UNIT hasten to investigate, I really like that the Doctor goes straight to examine the scene of crime rather than waste time being introduced to the director, as protocol dictates. The Brigadier has to observe such procedure because he is tied to the system, but the Doctor feels no pressure to do likewise. He marches to the beat of his own drum and always has!
Before the Doctor can investigate, however, he is rather startled by the unexpected arrival of a Time Lord, who pretty much just materialises in mid air with a burst of Tardis engine sound but minus any actual Tardis. That's a nifty trick, if you can do it!
The unnamed Time Lord has come to give the Doctor a warning about the Master having turned up on Earth. Their conversation is packed full of exposition as to who the Master is and the disdain the Doctor feels for him, clearly already knowing him well of old - one time classmates and academic rivals, is the gist. The Time Lord explains that since the Master has come to Earth and is likely to be gunning for the Doctor as a potential obstacle to his nefarious plots, the tribunal that exiled the Doctor to Earth felt he should be warned. Because he is effectively in prison, trapped here as he is, that makes his safety and wellbeing their responsibility, I suppose. Sort of. "You are incorrigibly meddlesome, Doctor, but we've always felt that your hearts are in the right places," the delegate smarms. That's slightly revisionist history, I feel, as the First Doctor didn't come across as always having been meddlesome - he had a far more hands-off approach to his travels than his successors, at least in the beginning - and the tribunal that exiled the Doctor didn't seem to appreciate his good intentions at all, it cared only that he had broken their rules. It is noticeable that those rules clearly still stand, as for all that the Time Lords know that the Master has come to Earth with sinister intentions, they are not prepared to take action against him, beyond giving the Doctor the heads up. It seems terribly unfair that the Doctor should be punished for interfering to help people, while the Master goes around summoning alien invasions upon unsuspecting planets, which is surely a far worse form of interference, and the Time Lords do nothing to restrain him! Maybe they feel that since the Doctor is in situ and is so meddlesome anyway, they can leave the Master for him to deal with and thus keep their hands clean. Well, if that was their intention, it kind of works!
Is the Doctor still wearing the cape he stole way back in Spearhead from Space, or did he just like it so much that he acquired another one just like it?
I'm not overly impressed by the direction for this story. A lot of scenes are really clumsily blocked. And there is so, so much primitive Chroma key compositing going on! It gets distracting after a while. But on the other hand, the show deserves its props for helping to pioneer the technique, as it was early experimentation like this that made today's virtually invisible green-screen techniques possible.
One of the missing scientists from the radio telescope is quickly located inside his lunch box. The Master has miniaturised him. So miniaturisation was established this early on as the Master's trademark, then. Nasty!
Ah, Mike Yates. It makes more sense for the Brigadier to have a captain than Sergeant Benton as his adjutant, hence the new recurring role. And Mike seems rather sweet and fairly capable and all. But seriously, I don't think I've ever seen a less soldierly soldier portrayed on any show ever, including Benton! He doesn't so much as attempt a properly military walk…
When Jo asks what a Nestene is, the Doctor tells her to ask Mike Yates, since he had the job of cleaning up the mess last time. So we are meant to believe that Mike has been with UNIT all along and was involved with the previous Nestene invasion in Spearhead from Space, even though we have never seen him before. Of course, having referred the question to him, the Doctor then answers it himself anyway, because that's just who the Third Doctor is. And the exposition provides a useful reminder for viewers who may not remember the Autons all that well, which is the value of bringing in Jo in place of Liz, who would remember them only too well and therefore not need the lecture.
Jo and Mike are very flirty throughout this story. Evidently the show's producers were toying with the idea of a romance, remembering how well certain previous male-female companion pairings had gone across with viewers and hoping to push the boundaries a little further with these two. The proposed romance never came to anything in the end, and Mike never became a proper companion, although he remained a recurring character for a good few seasons, but the flirtiness with Jo in this story really is pronounced.
I like that having disarmed the bomb the Master left at the radio telescope as a booby trap, the Doctor then makes sure it is utterly destroyed before any human scientists can get hold of it and try their hand at reverse engineering. "The weapons that you have on Earth are quite nasty enough as it is," he sternly tells the Brigadier. Well, quite.
I'm a bit confused as to why Jo suddenly appears at a plastics factory, trying her hand at a bit of spying. She wants to make herself useful, sure, but the last we heard she was offering to make a list of plastics factories to be investigated - there's a bit of a jump from there to actually going out in the field to do that investigating all by herself, probably unauthorised! Also, it's a bit coincidental that she happens to visit the exact plastics factory where the Master is taking over production. And then she proves herself to be a bit of a clutz and in no time at all has been found and hypnotised by the Master into taking a bomb back to UNIT HQ, where she proceeds to knock Mike Yates to the ground (girl's stronger than she looks! Or is more that Mike is a bit of a weed?) so that she can prime said bomb and attempt to blow everyone up - all on her first day at work! It isn't the most auspicious start to her career with UNIT, it's gotta be said.
Of course, since the Doctor is brilliant and perceptive and whatnot, he saves the day in the nick of time by chucking the bomb out of the window and into a canal, where it proceeds to blow up a few fish and startle a few ducks. I am very amused by the way Sergeant Benton's mind immediately goes to the complaints he is certain to have to field as a result and the Doctor has to remind him that, hello, being blown to bits would have been worse!
With Jo temporarily catatonic in the wake of her attempted act of terrorism, the Doctor gets to spout a lot of impressive-sounding psychobabble about post-hypnotic alienation and schizoid dissociation. It's all surprisingly technical for Doctor Who.
The Master murders a sceptical employee at the plastics factory by having him sit in a self-inflating plastic chair which then proceeds to suffocate him. Living plastic, ahoy! This is what makes the Autons so creepy - they take ordinary, everyday items (inflatable chairs weren't all that new in 1971, were they?) and turn them into semi-sentient objects of dread! Add to that the Master's creativity and the creep factor increases tenfold - he is far, far more sadistically imaginative than they are.
This adventure toys with the notion of giving us an interesting character story about hypnotised plastics factory manager Rex Farrell (played by Michael Wisher, who would go on to play Davros in Genesis of the Daleks) and his retired father, who built the business up from scratch and doesn't entirely trust his son to run it properly in his stead - that's the kind of familial character conflict I always appreciate. Alas, it doesn't really come to anything, as Farrell Sr. is dead within a few short scenes. The Master builds up quite a body count in this story - again, starting as he intends to go on!
The ongoing tension between the Doctor and the Brigadier is far more satisfying, though, as this has been going on ever since the Doctor joined UNIT and is unlikely to ever be resolved. It makes for a fascinating relationship between the two, as they work together so closely and have a lot of respect and affection for one another, yet this fundamental difference in outlook always hangs between them. The practical-minded Brigadier is a soldier with military instincts, shoot first and ask questions later; the Doctor is a scientist and a pacifist preferring to find creative, non-violent solutions wherever possible. Holding such opposing outlooks, it is hardly surprising that they butt heads so often, as they do throughout this story. It doesn't help that the Doctor intensely does not want to be here and as a result doesn't always take UNIT investigations seriously, regarding Earth's petty problems as somewhat beneath him, no matter how critical they appear to be from a human perspective.
The plastic troll doll thingy that comes to life and murders Farrell Sr. is very, very creepy-looking. I bet that one scared the kids!
When another lead is turned up, the Doctor takes a little trip to the circus to investigate, unaccompanied because he is in a grumpy mood and is taking it out on UNIT. We are shown a few random establishing shots of performing elephants, which make me as grumpy as the Doctor. And then the Doctor gets himself captured by some of the Master's hypnotised henchmen, because it wouldn't be Doctor Who if the Doctor wasn't captured and locked up at least once. He uses his John Smith alias again, in case we'd forgotten that that's the name he isn't really going by but pulls out when it proves useful. And then Jo proves herself to be useful too by following him against orders, raising the alarm when she sees him captured, and then rescuing him without waiting for backup. They don't escape very far, but, you know, good for Jo!
As they escape, Jo is confronted by what is probably her first corpse. She might as well get used to it now. She is going to encounter a lot worse than that, hanging out with the Doctor.
After escaping from the hypnotised circus folk, the Doctor and Jo allow themselves to be apprehended by Autons disguised as policemen, which isn't their brightest move ever. It takes the Doctor a terribly long time to notice he's been abducted, as well, as his attention is focused on a component he has stolen from the Master's Tardis. The moment he finally does notice that the policemen are Autons is the episode two cliffhanger - about which questions were raised in the House of Commons! It was very shocking, in 1971, for a family entertainment programme like Doctor Who to portray evil monsters masquerading as policemen, whom children were supposed to be encouraged to trust!
The Doctor being a bit slow on the uptake about the Auton policemen is more or less cancelled out by the Autons being remarkably slow to start shooting when he and Jo jump out of the car and sprint for cover (in the middle of a ubiquitous Doctor Who quarry, only this one actually is playing a quarry).
I am really, really not impressed by the car used by the Brigadier, Yates and a random red shirt UNIT soldier to come dashing to the rescue. It's an Austin Maxi, I believe. You'd think UNIT could muster up something a bit more robust and military than that.
And another UNIT red shirt bites the dust. Life expectancy at that organisation really isn't good!
Since bullets make no impression on Autons, Mike Yates thinks fast and drives the car straight into one, sending it flying over the edge of a cliff. It is a fantastic stunt - it really is a stunt man, not a dummy, who goes tumbling head over heels down that long, steep slope; when he hits bottom, he lies still just for a moment and then gets straight back up. In full Auton get-up, it's very scary, and all the more impressive since the stunt was achieved more accidentally than deliberately - the car hit the stuntman a tad harder than it was meant to, so that his fall was real, rather than controlled. But he wasn't (seriously) hurt and it looked absolutely awesome, so the director kept it in.
Back at UNIT HQ, the Brigadier holds a briefing session for a very select few, namely the Doctor, Jo and Mike Yates. Even Benton isn't invited. The Doctor behaves outrageously throughout. Visibly bored, he gets up and wanders over to his Tardis mid-briefing with the component he stole from the Master earlier, and becomes appallingly rude when the Brigadier calls him to order. For all his disgruntled grumblings to Jo later, when they are alone, about the ignorance of the military mind, the main reason for his petulance is clear: he now has in his possession a component that he believes will restore full functionality to his Tardis and therefore can no longer be bothered even trying to feign interest in Earth's trivial little alien invasion problems. Jo wins huge brownie points for not being afraid of her glowering, temperamental new boss, instead calling him out on being so rude and ungracious when the Brigadier just saved his life. Although suitably chastened, he remains surly, sniffing that he'll apologise later…if he has time. Just moments later he takes the stolen component into the Tardis, and although he assures Jo that he intends only to make a test flight, the goodbye that he bids her has a note of finality about it. It seems clear that he really doesn't have any intention of coming back, and that despite knowing that the Master is here and a full-blown Nestene invasion is imminent. The Third Doctor really is a piece of work! Then again, running away isn't exactly out of character for him; he's been running away from something ever since his abrupt departure from Gallifrey in the first place, and avoids all trappings of responsibility wherever possible. He usually sticks around long enough to resolve whatever threat is at large first, though. Luckily for Earth, the Master's Tardis is a newer version than the Doctor's, and the hardware proves incompatible. The Doctor throws quite the tantrum about this, his hopes and dreams of escaping exile shattered once again. I'd feel sorrier for him if he hadn't been prepared to abandon the planet to its doom just so he could taste freedom a little sooner.
The Doctor muses that a side effect of his sabotage of the Master's Tardis is that the Master is now also effectively trapped on Earth. Since he is a sadistic, sociopathic megalomaniac, this is not as amusing a notion as the Doctor seems to find it!
Okay, I really don't know what the logic is behind putting enormous carnival masks over the regular plastic Auton heads, but the end result is way creepy. Especially when they are dressed in bright yellow and are handing out plastic flowers.
This is a story where time is allowed to pass, as we jump forward slightly in time to see the Doctor throwing another hissy fit about the fact that the investigation has been going on for days now and is running cold, with no new leads turning up. He continues to take his pique out on UNIT, which bugs me because for all that the ideological differences he has with a military organisation such as UNIT are blatantly obvious, at the end of the day UNIT took him in when he had nowhere to go, they have given him friendship and shelter to sit out his exile in relative comfort, provided him with resources to work on his Tardis, and the Brigadier has personally protected his anonymity and alien origins on numerous occasions in the face of hard questioning. And all they ask in return is that he take their investigations seriously and help them out when they face alien invasions of this nature. Militaristic and a bit mickey mouse they might be, but they really don't deserve all the name-calling he throws at them in this story!
The Doctor declares that the Master is too conceited to give up. I love the little eye roll Jo gives when she hears this, seeing only too clearly the irony in the arrogant Doctor calling the Master conceited - she's got his measure already!
The Brigadier brings a man from the Ministry to talk to the Doctor about what he calls a 'rather alarming story'. Now, most incarnations of the Doctor would assume that the Brigadier wouldn't have brought this man to talk to him without a good reason and that therefore this alarming story must be both relevant and important. But Three is still in a foul mood and therefore goes on the attack at once, griping that he isn't in the mood for stories and sniping sourly at the Ministry man at length about his credentials, causing the man to seriously doubt that the Brigadier has brought him to the right person to be able to deal with his problem. I am gratified that in the course of his petty sniping, the Doctor defends the Brigadier wholeheartedly as being a busy man who shouldn't be troubled by the Ministry's petty concerns (he knows that the Brigadier is tied up in bureaucracy a lot of the time, and resents it on his behalf), but the trouble is that he doesn't know that this is a petty concern because he hasn't let the man speak! He has no idea what information this man has or how important it is or isn't. He is just being rude for the sake of being rude - and he really is outrageously rude. And then after all that it turns out that Mr Brownrose from the Ministry really does have important information after all, providing crucial evidence that leads their investigation to Farrell and his plastics factory, at last. All of which makes the Doctor's rudeness to the man both pointless and rather churlish.
As a character note for the Doctor, though, his attitude really drives home how enormously frustrated he is about his ongoing exile on a single planet at a single time, how desperately he yearns for the freedom to travel the universe once more. I suppose that also contributes to his amusement at similarly trapping the Master - he isn't looking at that situation from the perspective of a human whose planet has just gained an enormously powerful sociopath, he is looking at it from the perspective of a Time Lord in exile who has just seen a fellow Time Lord similarly imprisoned and knows he is no longer alone.
I am rather amused by the Doctor performing a post mortem on a large plastic troll doll!
The Brigadier, usually so calm in the midst of any storm, appears to be catching the Doctor's bad mood - hardly surprising, given the way the Doctor has been behaving in this story; he'd wear on anyone's nerves with that attitude! There is a rather fabulous little bicker-fest in which the Brigadier has finally had enough of the Doctor's irritable, autocratic attitude and snaps back, reminding him that this is a UNIT operation and he can't keep charging off by himself whenever he feels like it, and then Mike Yates chips in, volunteering to accompany the Doctor on an investigation of the plastics factory, only to get his head chewed off by the Brigadier, who intends to go himself to both get out from behind his desk and keep a sharp eye on the Doctor, and it just all feels very realistic. In stress situations people do take their frustrations out on one another, so it feels completely natural that these characters should be getting on each other's nerves and reacting to one another based on the high pressure situation they are in.
Apparently, safe cracking is one of the Third Doctor's skills. And he doesn't even need the sonic screwdriver to do it!
The Master has rigged the Doctor's telephone with a Nestene living plastic flex - the phone conversation where he triggers that trap is the first direct contact between the two renegade Time Lords in the story. And my goodness, Jon Pertwee doesn't half gurn! Luckily, the Brigadier isn't far away and dashes back to save him.
Man, I love how straight Nicholas Courtney always plays the Brigadier. No matter how humorous or absurd the line, he always plays it absolutely down the line.
I like it when we get to see the Doctor play with science.
I am very impressed that the Nestenes are able to produce plastic that crumbles away to nothing when breathed on. I mean, the breathing on thing might make it a little too fragile to be practical as more than a means of suffocating someone while leaving no trace, but I very much like the idea of bio-degradable plastic, which would solve a stack of Earth's ecological problems in one fell swoop!
For a story about an Auton invasion, the Autons really do play a very minor role - we are shown just enough to know that they are only going along with the Master for as long as suits their purposes as they have plans of their own, but beyond that they are very peripheral figures. This story is all about establishing the Master as the Doctor's nemesis, a real Moriarty figure.
With all the soldier-folk off planning an airstrike to knock out the bus full of Autons, the Master just waltzes into UNIT HQ for a face-to-face with the Doctor, their very first on-screen confrontation. How he got past security I am not going to ask. I suspect he probably shot and miniaturised any soldier who stood in his way!
The Doctor's relationship with the Master over the years has always been fascinating, being as much about how alike they are as it is about their profound differences, and this story is where it all began - the Master was specifically designed, in fact, as an equal and opposite version of the Doctor's own core personality. Their interaction throughout the story is certainly more about game playing than it is about serious, to the death enmity. Each enjoys the challenge that the other represents, each understands the other far better than he'd ever admit, and as mutual renegades from their own people they are, in a sense, kindred spirits - although again, neither would ever admit that. This has been their dynamic throughout the show, these two brilliant minds as much drawn to one another as they are repulsed, and that intriguing dynamic is already in full force here, in their very first on-screen meeting in the Master's very first story.
Of course, Jo enters the room at exactly the wrong moment to break the stalemate, first providing the Master with a useful hostage to hold over the Doctor's head and then blurting out top secret information about the planned air strike. She's having as many misses as hits in this her first adventure.
The Doctor and Jo provide useful hostages for the Master to use to force UNIT to call off their airstrike at the very last second, thus sparing the production team from having to attempt to portray said airstrike.
Handy life lesson for all evil bad guys out there - never leave the Doctor tied up in the foot well of a car, as he will use the brake pads to send a Morse message to his UNIT comrades nearby. Because for all that he complains about them at length, he is quite prepared to make use of them when it suits!
Another handy life lesson for all evil bad guys out there - be very careful when tying up Jo Grant, as she is quite the escapologist!
I am always so very amused by the UNIT boys playing at soldier! It wouldn't be a proper UNIT story without a load of shooting, however pointless that shooting might be. This story racks up quite the impressive death toll for UNIT red shirts. They seem to drop like flies in their final confrontation with the Autons, who, of course, are impervious to bullets. But it doesn't matter how pointless the shooting might be, UNIT like to let fly with the bullets regardless!
There's a nicely tense climax to the story as the Master appropriates a radio telescope to summon the rest of the Nestenes, but the Doctor then persuades him to switch sides ludicrously easily. I mean, he has spent this entire story plotting to make this invasion possible, and then with a single sentence the Doctor talks him into betraying his allies and working together to disperse their invasion force even as it beams in. This, I suppose, tells us something about the Master, right up front. He hadn't really thought the plan through to its logical conclusion - that the Nestenes were more likely to dispose of him once they arrived than to reward him - because the endgame was never what was important to him. He is just playing games because it amuses him, so it means nothing to him to cut his losses with this game and then move on to the next. This is also the reason he is never quite able to bring himself to actually kill the Doctor in any of their encounters, although he comes close plenty of times - he enjoys the challenge of their rivalry too much, and if the Doctor were killed, the game would be over and then what would he do for amusement?
The Nestene invasion is thwarted by the Doctor and the Master changing the polarity of something or other. But not the neutron flow, not yet - we are still waiting for that catch phrase to emerge.
The Autons are defeated and the Nestene invasion is thwarted, but the Master has escaped - although he remains trapped on Earth, since the Doctor still has the dematerialisation circuit from his Tardis. Now, the Master is a sociopath. A lot of people have died as a result of his machinations in this story. For as long as he remains on Earth, free to devise similarly nefarious schemes, many more people are likely to die. Yet the Doctor admits that he is rather looking forward to locking horns with his adversary once again. Because, once again, he is not looking at this situation from a human perspective, worried about the potential loss of life; he is looking at it as a Time Lord in exile, who has been bored rigid by his imprisonment on this planet and now has the prospect of an ongoing rivalry with a mind equal to his own to keep him occupied and amused. I can understand why he feels that way. But it doesn't endear him to me!
Quotable Quotes
JO: "I'm your new assistant."
DOCTOR: "Oh, no."
BRIGADIER: "What you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes and to tell you how brilliant you are. Miss Grant will fulfil that function admirably."
TIME LORD: "I am travelling incognito."
DOCTOR: "Oh? Why?"
TIME LORD: "We Time Lords don't care to be conspicuous. Some of us, that is."
DOCTOR: "Look, if you've come down merely to be rude -"
TIME LORD: "I came to warn you. An old acquaintance has arrived on this planet."
DOCTOR: "Oh? One of our people?"
TIME LORD: "The Master."
DOCTOR: "That jackanapes! All he ever does is cause trouble."
TIME LORD: "He'll certainly try to kill you, Doctor. The tribunal thought that you ought to be made aware of your danger."
DOCTOR: "How very kind of them."
TIME LORD: "You are incorrigibly meddlesome, Doctor, but we've always felt that your hearts are in the right places. But be careful. The Master has learnt a great deal since you last met him."
DOCTOR: "I refuse to be worried by a renegade like the Master. He's an unimaginative plodder."
TIME LORD: "His degree in cosmic science was of a higher class than yours."
DOCTOR: "Yes, well, er, yes, well, I, I was a late developer."
TIME LORD: "Such an amusing idea."
DOCTOR: "Well, you'd better think of a witty way of dealing with it."
DOCTOR: "I thought you took an A-Level in science."
JO: "I didn't say I passed."
YATES: "What do you think, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "I still am."
YATES: "Huh?"
DOCTOR: "Thinking."
YATES: "She's been hypnotised?"
DOCTOR: "Well, of course. Why else do you think she tried to blow us all to pieces?"
DOCTOR: "You know, Brigadier, your methods have all the refined subtlety of a bull in a china shop."
DOCTOR: "What's your friend's name?"
ROSSINI: "His name's none of your business."
DOCTOR: "A strange name."
ROSSINI: "Come, come, Doctor. Gentlemen don't discuss money."
DOCTOR: "Nonsense. Gentlemen never talk about anything else."
FARRELL: "And you're not angry?"
MASTER: "Because the Doctor's escaped again? No. He's an interesting adversary. I admire him in many ways."
FARRELL: "But you still intend to destroy him?"
MASTER: "Of course and the more he struggles to postpone the moment, the greater the ultimate satisfaction."
JO: "What on earth is he doing inside a horsebox?"
DOCTOR: "It isn't exactly a horsebox. It just happens to look like one."
JO: "You mean there isn't a horse inside."
DOCTOR: "No more than there's a policeman inside my police box."
DOCTOR: "Do you know, Jo, I sometimes think that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
JO: "You're not very grateful, are you?"
DOCTOR: "What? For having my time wasted?"
JO: "He did save our lives, you know."
JO: "Doctor, stop being childish."
DOCTOR: "What's wrong with being childish? I like being childish."
DOCTOR: "I think you'll find, sir, that I'm qualified to deal with practically everything, if I choose."
BRIGADIER: "Now just a moment, Doctor. I'm aware for your preference for acting as a one-man band, but this does happen to be a UNIT operation."
DOCTOR: "It's plastic, Brigadier, and any plastic artefact, anything at all, can, in the Nestene sense of the word, be alive."
BRIGADIER: "I've got the RAF to lay on a rocket strike. In a few hours time, that coach should be a pile of scrap iron."
DOCTOR: "The military mind at its most scintillating. Faced with a problem they blast it off the face of the earth."
DOCTOR: "You've come here to kill me, of course."
MASTER: "But not without considerable regret."
DOCTOR: "How very comforting."
MASTER: "You see, Doctor, you're my intellectual equal. Almost. I have so few worth opponents. When they've gone, I always miss them."
MASTER: "I see you've been working on the Nestene autojet. My own small contribution to their invasion plan."
DOCTOR: "Vicious, complicated and inefficient. Typical of your way of thinking."
MASTER: "Now, come, come, Doctor. Death is always more frightening when it strikes invisibly."
MASTER: "You're bluffing on an empty hand, Doctor."
DOCTOR: "I'm not bluffing and my hand, as you can see, is not empty."
MASTER: "I apologise for your last moments on earth being so uncomfortable, Doctor."
BRIGADIER: "Can't you do anything, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Not unless we change the polarity."
BRIGADIER: "Think he'll turn up again, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Yes, bound to."
JO: "You don't seem very worried about it."
DOCTOR: "I'm not. As a matter of fact, Jo, I'm rather looking forward to it."
The Verdict
Overall and taken as a whole, Three is never going to be my favourite incarnation of the Doctor but I appreciate the pace and continuity of this adventure, which is a decent introduction to a new season and to several new characters, although the material deserved a rather grittier tone than it was given.