Menu Close

Tag: Liz Shaw

Who in the Time of COVID

Review of Doctor Who and the Silurians (#52)

DVD Release Date: 03 Jun 08
Original Air Date: 31 Jan – 14 Mar 1970
Doctors/Companions: Three, Liz Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: Spearhead from Space (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: The Ambassadors of Death (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)

Silurians have never been one of my favorite species. Although I came to Doctor Who through the new series, it was still before they made their return in The Hungry Earth. Thus this story, as for earlier generations of fans, was my introduction to the erstwhile dominant species on Earth.

When my main memory of this story was the questionable rubber monster suits, then, perhaps I can be excused for not knowing off the top of my head which side of the Highs and Lows this month’s entry was meant to fall on. I was pleased to find, when I checked the i09 reference rankings, that it comes in at #24, and settled in to be reminded of a good story I’d forgotten about.

Little did I know how viewing the story in 2021 would color my experience.

Read more →

Burn Baby Burn

3 Comments

Review of Inferno: SE (#54)

DVD Release Date: 11 Jun 13
Original Air Date: 09 May – 20 Jun 1970
Doctor/Companion: Three, Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: The Ambassadors of Death (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: Terror of the Autons (Three, Jo, the Brigadier)

It seems strange to me that despite how much I love this serial, I’ve never actually given Inferno a proper review before. I count it among my Top 3 pre-Hiatus favorites and have recommended it often to those who want to try out new-to-them earlier Doctors (as long as they can handle a seven-part serial), so I was thrilled a few months ago to see it pop up on the list of upcoming Special Edition releases.

I was further thrilled when I realized June had seen the release of two stories written by Don Houghton (the other being The Mind of Evil). It’s only as I’ve gotten more deeply entrenched in Whovian culture that I’ve paid attention to such details. (I used to watch television and simply take what I saw on screen as it came, passing judgment in terms of “I do/don’t like this,” but not paying the least attention to writers, directors, and such. Go figure.) But I feel the richer for it; I have a new appreciation for why MoE worked for me, knowing my fondness for Inferno.

So what’s so hot (see what I did there?) about Inferno anyway? Well, for one thing, it throws in a beautiful idea not really seen in Doctor Who up to this point: that of an alternate universe. I love the way we get to see little personality differences between familiar characters and their counterparts in the parallel dimension. The supporting cast is brilliant, not least the stellar (if regrettably named) Olaf Pooley as Professor Stahlman. Despite some pretty “out there” plot developments, the whole cast plays everything straight, and you can’t help believe in their experiences and reactions. If nothing else, the administrative red tape that ties Sir Keith Gold’s hands from doing anything useful to prevent impending disaster adds a sense of (slightly depressing) realism.

Read more →

Now That’s Diplomatic Tension

2 Comments

Review of The Ambassadors of Death (#53)

DVD Release Date: 10 Oct 12
Original Air Date: 21 Mar – 02 May 1970
Doctor/Companion: Three, Liz Shaw, the Brigadier
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: Doctor Who and the Silurians (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: Inferno (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)

It’s been a Three-rich environment around here lately, what with taking G through his era and the DVD releases for October and November both starring this particular Doctor. It’s a good thing I quite like him, or I’d be in trouble.

As far as what I’ve seen, Ambassadors is the penultimate story of Three’s tenure. (The final one is The Mind of Evil, which is being painstakingly colorized by the ridiculously talented Stuart Humphryes, aka BabelColour, and is due out on DVD some time next year.) I was plenty surprised, then, when the opening titles kind of stopped halfway through, cut to a short “pre-titles sequence” and then finished the titles. That format was never used again (which explains my surprise), but I thought it was kind of a cool, interesting way to go about it. (It’s also fun to note that this it the first story to use the “sting” into the closing credits.)

Given the way space travel was just getting underway with the Apollo program at the time these were filmed and broadcast, I found it primarily interesting from a historical perspective. As the astronauts had trouble with their Mars Probe 7, I couldn’t help but wonder how far from Apollo 13 (in which a malfunction endangered the lives of three American astronauts) this was produced. The extras (see below) answered that question – Apollo 13 launched the day Episode 4 aired, encountered its famous “problem” three days later, and splashed down safely the day before Episode 5. That had to have made things awfully weird for the viewers.

Read more →

Retro-View #4: A New Leading Man

4 Comments

Spearhead from Space (Story #51, 1970)
Viewed 10 Oct 2012

Doctor/Companion: Three, Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Shaw, the Brigadier
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: The War Games (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
Succeeding Story: Doctor Who and the Silurians (Three, Liz, the Brigadier)
Notable Aspects:

  • Three’s first story

Now this was not a reaction I’d anticipated – G is a shipper! She’s convinced that Three fancies Liz. I suppose she might have a point. She’s not far off base when, after the Doctor wiggles his eyebrows at Liz and tells her “That’s Delphon for ‘how do you do?’,” she says, “It’s also wolf for ‘what a babe.'”

Of course, she appears to fancy Three herself (have I mentioned that she’s about a decade older than Pertwee was when these were filmed?). The shower scene prompts her to comment that Three’s is “not a bad body.” By the end of Part 3, G’s praise is effusive: “This is a good one. I just like the new guy a lot. I’m in love.” Perhaps, then, there’s a bit of projection at work in her Three/Liz ship.

She loves the switch to color, and comments on the updated music, too. (Not sure how updated it can be, since Dudley Simpson was also responsible for The War Games – though admittedly there was hardly any incidental music in that particular serial.) The humorous bent of the Doctor-based portions of this adventure are right up G’s alley, as well. Three’s first view of his own face, Liz’s take-no-prisoners attitude toward the Brigadier (Brigadier: Am I interrupting? / Liz: Yes.), the way the Doctor calmly appropriates first an outfit and then a car – all of these result in the gleeful noises I so love to hear. “This is very Monty Python-ish,” she declares as the Part 1 credits roll.

Read more →

Necessity Is the Mother of Reinvention

4 Comments

Review of Spearhead from Space: SE (#51)
DVD Release Date: 14 Aug 12
Original Air Date: 03 – 24 Jan 1970
Doctor/Companion: Three, Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Shaw
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John
Preceding Story: The War Games (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
Succeeding Story: Doctor Who and the Silurians (Three, Liz)

When Pat Troughton left Doctor Who, the show was kind of in trouble. Ratings had fallen, and the BBC wasn’t sure it wanted to put any more into something that had such a lackluster performance. For various reasons, it continued nonetheless, but by necessity – both due to casting changes and other production pressures – it did so as quite a different program.

As a result, there are a lot of amazing firsts in this story. We get our first taste of a new Doctor, a new Companion, a new credits sequence, a new “monster” and a new era of television: color. Sitting through it again, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to multiple later stories, primarily Terror of the Autons and Rose, thanks to those pesky Nestene-controlled Autons, though the dual-hearted x-ray (another first – the mention of a Time Lord’s now-famous binary vascular system) had me flashing to The Movie for a moment.

Its opening episode is a lovely way to bring UNIT back into the mix – where it would stay, to one degree or another, throughout Three’s time in the TARDIS and beyond. I can’t help but smile at the Brigadier’s reaction to the news that an abandoned police box has been found in the middle of a field, or at the exchange between the Brigadier and the Doctor as both realize how much his face has changed.

Read more →