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Tag: Hidden Gems

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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Blatant and Benign

Review of The Curse of Peladon (#61)

DVD Release Date: 04 May 10
Original Air Date: 29 Jan – 19 Feb 1972
Doctors/Companions: Three, Jo Grant
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story: Day of the Daleks (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: The Sea Devils (Three, Jo)

As the United Kingdom formalizes its “Brexit” from the European Union, it’s kind of interesting to use this installment in the Hidden Gems series to view things from the other end of the timeline. Back in the early 1970s, Britain was debating whether or not to join the then-European Economic Community in the first place. Doctor Who, never a show to go subtle with its allegorical stories if blatant will do, gave us The Curse of Peladon.

Interestingly enough, the result is actually not terrible. (Contrast this with much of fandom’s opinion of the later Monster of Peladon, which focuses on a miner’s strike, and ranks a full 90 places lower on the io9 list.) Despite some of the expected, rather heavy-handed preaching about how (a) these people aren’t out to get you, they’re here to help and (b) your religious beliefs are all outlandish superstitions, inappropriate in a time of Science and Reason, the story doesn’t feel overly tied to real world politics, at least not at the moment (when there’s a whole different pile of politics to worry us).

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Work to Do

Review of Survival (#155)

DVD Release Date: 14 Aug 07
Original Air Date: 22 Nov- 06 Dec 1989
Doctors/Companions: Seven, Dorothy “Ace” McShane
Stars: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story: The Curse of Fenric (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: The Movie (Eight, Grace)

Everyone I know is feeling the stress of the months-long (and not as useful as we’d like because people keep prioritizing their own convenience over others’ health and lives) pandemic restrictions. We’re fatigued. We’re traumatized. We’re So Done™.

No one will be surprised to hear that when I sat down to re-watch Survival for this month’s Hidden Gems entry, I was feeling less than enthused. So it speaks to the quality of this story that I was far less distracted than anticipated as the familiar events unfolded on screen.

The Doctor and Ace arrive in her hometown of Perivale so she can look up her old friends, but they’re nowhere to be found. As they search town together, Ace and the Doctor realize there’s something more sinister at play than just some angsty teens skipping out on a boring scene. Almost before they know it, they find themselves on another planet, where the Cheetah People hunt human prey and the Master (as usual) has his own nefarious agenda.

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Memories Unlocked

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Review of Mawdryn Undead (#125)

DVD Release Date: 03 Nov 09
Original Air Date: 01 – 09 Feb 1983
Doctors/Companions: Five, Nyssa of Traken, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough, the Brigadier
Stars: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: Snakedance (Five, Nyssa, Tegan)
Succeeding Story: Terminus (Five, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough)

I’ll be the first to admit that the Fifth Doctor’s era is not at the top of my list of personal favorites. Maybe that’s why so many of them are vague and nebulous in my memory, including Mawdryn Undead. Yet nearly the only thing I clearly remembered about it turned out to be pretty much the last plot detail in the whole story.

As the introductory story for clearly-not-from-Earth schoolboy Turlough, MU might seem like one that would be rather memorable. And while I rarely hear anyone loudly singing its praises, neither does it get regularly ripped on within fandom. Falling at #63 of 254 in the io9 ranking, it just squeaks under the wire into the top quartile. That all puts it solidly in Hidden Gem territory, a not-bad-but-rarely-a-favorite adventure that’s worth revisiting.

When we meet Turlough, he’s being generally mischievous, crashing the Brigadier’s one-of-a-kind car that’s been parked in front of the boarding school where Turlough is a student and the Brigadier has been teaching. He’s immediately unlikable to me, and I can’t even really feel sorry for him when the Black Guardian appears to manipulate him into doing the Guardian’s dirty work.

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Where It All Began

Review of The Daleks (#2)

DVD Release Date: 28 Mar 06
Original Air Date: 21 Dec 1963 – 01 Feb 1964
Doctors/Companions: One, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: An Unearthly Child (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: The Edge of Destruction (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)

As fashions within fandom ebb and flow, and “received fan wisdom” dictates ever-changing opinions about various eras, it’s been my experience that many fans generally dismiss the First Doctor, particularly if they came to the show via the modern era. Yet very few of his adventures regularly rank in the bottom quartile of “best-of lists” like the io9 one I used as reference for my Bad Reputation series. So why don’t more fans appreciate what Hartnell’s Doctor has to offer?

I’m sure a lot of it is plain and simple disdain for the production values associated with television that’s nearly sixty years out of date. Since the first TV I remember in my childhood home was a black-and-white set, the style of the Hartnell era bothers me less than I suppose it does younger fans. But some of the storytelling, slow though it was by modern standards, was really interesting. More even than that, though, this month’s Hidden Gem is immensely important to the show as a whole, as it introduces one of the most iconic science fiction creatures of all time, the Daleks.

Fair warning, in case you want to watch this adventure for the first time: it is seven episodes long. That works out to a nearly three-hour run time, all told, so be sure to account for that in your viewing schedule. You may find you enjoy the experience more if you spread the episodes out over several days, unless you’re mostly looking for a way to fill endless hours stuck at home during your self-quarantine.

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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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Tranquil Rewatch

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Review of Revelation of the Daleks (#142)
DVD Release Date: 06 Jun 06
Original Air Date: 23 – 30 Mar 1985
Doctors/Companions: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Timelash (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: The Mysterious Planet (Six, Peri)

Circumstances conspired against me again, and I was in no mood to appreciate even a Hidden Gem like Revelation of the Daleks when I sat down to rewatch it. Although I’ve come to appreciate Ol’ Sixie, he’s still among my least favorite Doctors to watch; I’ve gotten pretty tired of Daleks over the years; and to top it all off, I was fighting off a fever and sore throat.

Nevertheless, as the fog of obligation retreats, and I can reflect on it from the other side of that viewing, I find there are plenty of things to recommend Revelation. On a purely superficial level, for example, we have the Doctor’s coat-of-many-colors covered for most of the first 45-minute episode by a lovely blue cloak.

I’d also forgotten that this was Peri’s introduction to the Daleks. When she sees one roll past, then, she doesn’t immediately warn the Doctor of the danger; she merely calls out with startlement about “some sort of machinery.” To his credit, the Doctor doesn’t chastise her; he merely goes to investigate.

That point, in fact, is probably one of the best parts of the entire adventure, and one that didn’t even register as I was watching (a sure sign that I was not giving it my full attention—or at least not what would’ve been my full attention pre-pandemic). One of the most difficult things about the early parts of Colin Baker’s run is the way the writers had the Doctor and Peri at each other’s throats all the time. One of the reasons I love Mark of the Rani so much (aside from the Rani herself) is that the TARDIS team acts like they actually have affection for each other.

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A View Through Interesting Times

Review of Planet of the Daleks (#68)
DVD Release Date: 02 Mar 10
Original Air Date: 07 Apr – 12 May 1973
Doctors/Companions: Three, Jo Grant
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story: Frontier in Space (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: The Green Death (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)

A whole lot has changed around the world in the three weeks since my last post went up. Locally, my kids’ school had a teachers’ strike just before COVID-19 really hit our state. By the time classes were ready to resume, the governor had ordered schools closed for two weeks, which leads up to our scheduled spring break. I kind of doubt in-person classes will resume until the fall.

Meanwhile, my family has been self-isolating. Though our introverted tendencies make the change less awkward for us than for some, the added stress of a global pandemic has wreaked havoc on my concentration and my sense of chill. Maybe that’s why a slow-starting story failed to grab me.

I had hoped that I’d enjoy Planet of the Daleks more. After all, it’s meant to be one of the Hidden Treasures, and I know from past experience that I don’t dislike it. But the rewatch primarily felt like a chore.

As I try to separate my general malaise from feelings about the adventure itself, and look at the story as objectively as I possibly can, I believe that the somewhat expository opening episode is the weakest part. It serves primarily as set-up for the following sections, and as such felt like a bit of a slog.

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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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Leave the Light On

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Review of Ghost Light (#153)
DVD Release Date: 07 Jun 05
Original Air Date: 04 – 18 Oct 1989
Doctors/Companions: Seven, Dorothy “Ace” McShane
Stars: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story: Battlefield (Seven, Ace, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: The Curse of Fenric (Seven, Ace)

Today begins (with a slight delay, since the regular fourth Wednesday slot was co-opted by a review of the latest new episode) this year’s series of regular reviews, focusing on “Hidden Gems” within the televised canon of Classic Doctor Who stories. Because the Seventh Doctor was next up for keeping the proportion of reviewed stories approximately even, we start with a story from the final regular season of the show’s original run, Ghost Light.

This is one of the stories whose ranking I’m fudging. Coming in at #53 of 254 on io9’s Best-to-Worst list—the highest ranking of those I’ll be reviewing this year—Ghost Light is actually still within the first quartile, rather than the second. However, it’s close enough for my purposes, and with a little handwavium, allows me to fit two of the remaining four unreviewed McCoy stories into this year’s theme where I need them.

Many fans speak highly of this episode, so I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there who would agree it’s a “gem,” but why is it not ranked higher, allowing me to claim it as “hidden”? I believe the answer lies simply in the fact that the plot is so complex, even the Doctor can’t follow it. (I mean that quite literally. At one point he declares, “Things are getting out of control. Even I can’t play this many games at once!”) It’s seriously mind-boggling. Admittedly, it had been some time since I’d last seen it, but despite knowing basically what was coming, I’ve never been quite able to keep all the threads of plot straight in my mind.

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