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Tag: Four

The Brain of Neowhovian

Review of The Brain of Morbius (#84)

DVD Release Date: 07 Oct 08
Original Air Date: 03 – 24 Jan 1976
Doctors/Companions: Four, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: The Android Invasion (Four, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story: The Seeds of Doom (Four, Sarah Jane)

This week includes both the 57th anniversary of Doctor Who‘s first broadcast and the American Thanksgiving holiday, so it feels like an appropriate time to review a well-loved story, a Hidden Gem that barely fits the moniker. It’s pretty hard to argue that The Brain of Morbius is hidden from fandom in any meaningful way, as it is often cited as an iconic story from an era that many consider “golden,” but in the five-year-old io9 ranking of the 254 stories then extant, it placed at #110, solidly in the second quartile.

So how does a famous story end up in such an ignominious place? It’s a good question that dovetails nicely with my own experience of Morbius. Before sitting down to re-watch, I didn’t really remember much detail; the story as a whole had not made a big impression on me, despite my having seen it multiple times. My clearest sense of the story was its obvious allegorical similarities to Frankenstein. If I thought hard enough, I also remembered that this is where we saw all those mysterious faces that may well have been previously unknown incarnations of the Doctor (or, others would argue, might be Morbius’s other faces), but that was pretty much the extent of it.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that the Doctor and Sarah Jane had landed on Karn.

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Agreeable, Decent, and Short

Review of The Sontaran Experiment (#77)
DVD Release Date: 06 Mar 07
Original Air Date: 22 Feb – 01 Mar 1975
Doctors/Companions: Four, Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan
Stars: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Ian Marter
Preceding Story: The Ark in Space (Four, Sarah Jane, Harry)
Succeeding Story: Genesis of the Daleks (Four, Sarah Jane, Harry)

One common experience I’ve heard from people over and over during this pandemic is that it’s very difficult to concentrate. Whether it’s our work or our entertainment, no one seems to have the brainpower to do anything that requires anything beyond the attention span of a hamster.

That’s why The Sontaran Experiment is the perfect selection for this month’s installment in the Hidden Gems series. The only quality this adventure shares with the eponymous enemies’ famous ones (namely, being “nasty, brutish, and short,” like life) is that blessed final one. At two episodes long, it is one of the shortest Classic Doctor Who serials ever, on par with a single modern Who episode. Adding to the delight is that it stars a relatively calm, low-key Tom Baker, early in his run, alongside Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith and Ian Marter’s too-oft-overlooked Harry Sullivan.

Having just left Nerva Station (see: The Ark in Space), the Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry arrive at a transmat receiver on the “dead” planet Earth that those on Nerva had left behind. Harry and Sarah Jane spend a fair amount of time talking about the complete lack of life on the planet and how creepy it is, all the while tromping through heavy scrub. You can practically hear botanists everywhere screaming at them.

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Step Into the Mystery

Review of Warriors’ Gate (#113)
DVD Release Date: 05 May 09
Original Air Date: 03 – 24 Jan 1981
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana II, K-9, Adric
Stars: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson, Matthew Waterhouse
Preceding Story: State of Decay (Four, Romana II, K-9, Adric)
Succeeding Story: The Keeper of Traken (Four, Adric, Nyssa)

One of the things about Classic Who that’s become more obvious in retrospect is how the multi-part serial format allowed for extensive story set-up, leading to a slow build. So begins the final installment in The E-Space Trilogy, the spacetime-bending Warriors’ Gate.

Effectively all of Part One is background, laying the scene for what comes after in the manner that a modern audience expects more to see in a novel than in a TV show. We meet the human crew of a cargo ship stranded in some strange void, reminiscent of The Mind Robber (which I’m set to review in October); the Doctor and his friends soon find themselves there, too. The humans’ navigator is a leonine being, apparently enslaved, who breaks free, enters the TARDIS out of phase with their timeline, and then retreats via a door in a stone arch through an ancient, cobwebby great hall. The Doctor follows.

One could be forgiven for thinking, at this stage, that there’s not much to this story, and that one’s time could be better spent elsewhere. But there are several mysterious situations established here that develop in interesting ways through the rest of the serial. What’s the relationship between the Tharils—those leonine beings valued for being “time sensitive”—and the humans? What’s up with the microcosmic void? Is it really near the boundary of E-Space and N-Space, and why does it seem unstable? And is that ancient hall really as abandoned as it looks?

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Eldrad Must Get On With It

Review of The Hand of Fear (#87)
DVD Release Date: 10 Aug 09
Original Air Date: 02 – 23 Oct 1976
Doctors/Companions: Four, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: The Masque of Mandragora (Four, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story: The Deadly Assassin (Four)

There are many memorable things about The Hand of Fear: the disembodied hand, “Eldrad must live,” Sarah Jane’s outfit, and—of course!—her touching, somewhat precipitous farewell. Unfortunately, plot is not among them.

Perhaps that’s why io9’s Best-to-Worst list ranked it in the bottom 30%, at #187 of 254. While plenty of other stories I’ve reviewed have fared far worse (see, for example, The Monster of Peladon, Terminus, and Timelash), HoF is the lowest-ranked of the Fourth Doctor’s remaining titles on my “to be reviewed” list, so here we are.

It all starts out promisingly enough, with a quarry actually acting as a quarry, for once. The Doctor and Sarah Jane land there accidentally just as some charges are set to detonate, resulting in Sarah Jane being buried. She reaches for a hand held out to her that turns out to be a piece of the remains of an alien being known as Eldrad.

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Not the End of the World

Review of The Armageddon Factor (#103)
DVD Release Date: 09 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 20 Jan – 24 Feb 1979
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Power of Kroll (Four, Romana I)
Succeeding Story: Destiny of the Daleks (Four, Romana II)

This month marks the fourth of six installments of The Key to Time that has made it onto the Bad Reputation list. The Armageddon Factor is, however, the highest-ranked of those four on io9’s Best-to-Worst list, coming in at #207 of 254, putting it in only the bottom fifth of televised canon.

It had been a good long while since I’d last watched this one, so I’d forgotten a great deal of both the plot and the trappings. For example, it came as a bit of a surprise to discover how much of the story revolved around that last piece of the Key to Time. To be honest, pretty much all I remembered were who the Doctor and Companion were, and that a guest character was wearing a future Companion’s body (or, more correctly, vice versa).

To set the stage for readers who, like me, need either a refresher or an introduction to the adventure, the Doctor and Romana I are in pursuit of the final segment of the Key to Time when they arrive at a pair of twin planets, only one of which is where they expect. Atrios and Zeos are, to our heroes’ surprise, in midst of a nuclear war.

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A Circle of Disappointment

Review of The Stones of Blood (#101)
DVD Release Date: 01 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 28 Oct – 18 Nov 1978
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm
Preceding Story: The Pirate Planet (Four, Romana I, K-9)
Succeeding Story: The Androids of Tara (Four, Romana I)

When I determined that this story was next up in my Bad Reputation series, I must admit I was a bit stumped. Despite its placement at #216 of 254 in io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking—putting it in the bottom 15%—I have always heard nothing but good things about this one.

Well, okay; maybe almost nothing but good things. Or maybe “enough” good things? Suffice to say, most of what I remembered before rewatching was the Ogri, a bad guy posing as a goddess (the Cailleach), and Amelia Rumford.

Going in, then, I was feeling pretty upbeat. The only “bad” part of the story I remembered was the horny campers who died stupidly at the hands of the Ogri (well, by their hands on the Ogri). But as I watched this time with a more critical eye, I found my estimation of the adventure dropping. I’m not sure I’ve ever come out of one of these Bad Reputation viewings with a lower opinion of the story than I went in, but that turned out to be the case this time.

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Do Androids Dream of Tin Dogs?

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Review of The Androids of Tara (#101)
DVD Release Date: 01 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 25 Nov – 16 Dec 1978
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana I, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Stones of Blood (Four, Romana I)
Succeeding Story: The Power of Kroll (Four, Romana I)

When I decided on the next stories for the Bad Reputation™ series that I posted about last week, the four lowest-ranking Fourth Doctor selections in my spreadsheet surprised me. None of them struck me as particularly “bad,” and a couple I’d even go so far as to say I’m fond of.

Adding to the “hmm” factor, the first three of them were from the same season: The Key to Time (TKtT). So what gives?

The best I can figure is that when left to my own devices, I’ve already picked out both some of the very best and some of the very worst stories to talk about, leaving most of the “mid-range” adventures still in the queue. Even so, I don’t think I’d have predicted that The Androids of Tara, the fourth segment of TKtT, would fall in the bottom 15%. Yet in io9’s Best-to-Worst rankings, it came in at #217 of 254.

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Confession #123: I Messed Up

The first thing I have to confess today is that after Gallifrey One, I completely lost track of when I was supposed to be posting. What with my kids’ crazy spring schedule, the thirty-nine inches of snow we got in February that are now trying to melt off within a two-week span, and the siren call of my fiction writing, the blog simply fell off the radar.

It doesn’t help that I hadn’t put anything on my 2019 calendar that hadn’t dripped over from 2018 when I adjusted for my Series Eleven posts. Thus, here we are, a week late and a blog post short.

As I look ahead now, I realize that I’ve quite enjoyed the “Bad Reputation” series, and I’d like to continue it. So let me walk you through my decision-making process, and share what’s to come for the rest of the year.

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Missing the Point

Review of Meglos (#110)
DVD Release Date: 11 Jan 11
Original Air Date: 27 Sep – 18 Oct 1980
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana II, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson
Preceding Story: The Leisure Hive (Four, Romana II, K-9)
Succeeding Story: Full Circle (Four, Romana II, K-9, Adric)

Who doesn’t love a talking cactus? Or, better yet, a Doctor-shaped talking cactus with spine-covered skin? (If you guessed me, you’d be right.)

As with so many of the stories we’ve explored in this Bad Reputations series, there are some good ideas lurking at the heart of Meglos, but somehow they never come to fruition. The weirdly realized antagonist, its incoherent plan, and the heavy-handed religion-v-science subplot all contribute to an underwhelming product that lands at #200 of 254 on io9’s Best-to-Worst list.

Sometimes a rewatch helps me find something in a story that I hadn’t appreciated before. Usually, I find that my vague recollections only cover the surface of the plot or setting or characterization. To a certain extent that’s again true for Meglos, where Tom Baker’s cactus-y mien overshadowed all other memories such that even the identity of his Companion(s) had been lost to me. Realizing I got not only Jacqueline Hill (though not as Barbara) but also Lalla Ward’s Romana II was thus a delightful re-discovery.

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A Load of Bull

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Review of The Horns of Nimon (#108)
DVD Release Date: 06 Jul 10
Original Air Date: 22 Dec 1979 – 12 Jan 1980
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana II, K-9
Stars: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson
Preceding Story: Nightmare of Eden (Four, Romana II, K-9)
Succeeding Story: The Leisure Hive (Four, Romana II, K-9)

I tell ya, I really took one for the team this time. On that io9 list I’ve been using for reference, only six stories (out of 254) ranked worse than The Horns of Nimon. It did not earn that ranking for nothing.

On its surface, Nimon is another retelling of a Greek myth (which may or may not be clear to the viewer; more on that below). When you drill down further, it’s… erm… a mess.

Several of the hallmarks of this era of Who are present: the TARDIS unexpectedly arriving on or near a lonely spaceship, K9 being sidelined for most of the adventure, and Romana swanning about in a fabulous outfit. And while the sets, creature design, and even costuming (though is this throw-away character in Part Four wearing the Black Guardian’s feathers?!) are pretty good for 1979, head-bad-guy Soldeed’s overacting is truly epic.

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