Menu Close

Tag: Susan

Resistance Is Vital

2 Comments

Review of The Dalek Invasion of Earth (#10)

DVD Release Date: 29 Jul 20
Original Air Date: 21 Nov – 26 Dec 1964
Doctors/Companions: One, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: Planet of Giants (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: The Rescue (One, Ian, Barbara, Vicki)

For once, during my rewatch for an entry in the Everything Else series, I found that the things I could spontaneously recall beforehand were both accurate and fairly important details. Although that recall was on the slow side, once I got my head in the right story space, a picture formed pretty easily: a “No Dumping” sign, cyber-ized humans, a bomb in the center of the earth [okay, that part was slightly mixed up], and Susan gets ditched.

The story opens with the TARDIS crew landing—finally!—in London. Ian and Barbara aren’t fussed about being off by a couple of years either way from their departure, but it soon becomes apparent that they’re actually 200 years in their future, in the year 2164. Worse, the world is in a post-apocalyptic state where the Daleks are the self-proclaimed “masters of Earth.”

Given that the adventure spans six episodes, it is unsurprising that our TARDIS crew of four soon gets split into two, then three, and even four groups. Each of our heroes make their own acquaintances and allies among the human resistance as they are chased, and sometimes captured, by the Daleks and their enslaved human “Robomen.”

After performing too well on an intelligence test (which serves as a reminder to the modern viewer that these episodes were first broadcast only a year into the show’s run, while it was still very much meant to be teaching history and/or science to a young audience), the Doctor is himself selected to be robotized. Luckily, our story arcs converge here and Barbara and Susan help bring the chaos that allows for a rescue.

One of the things that keeps this particular six-parter from dragging too much is the aforementioned splits and convergences of subsets of the TARDIS crew. More often than not, Ian gets to hare off by himself and do something heroic (par for the course) while the others each do their own thing. But we get more instances than usual of other party members having interesting experiences, too.

For one thing, Barbara gets to be even more badass than usual, driving some sort of tanker truck (conveniently stolen from a vehicle museum, in perfect working order) straight through a rank of Daleks. Her experiences with the Doctor serve her well in other sections of the story, too, allowing her to contribute important ideas and skills to a group or to devise her own plan of resistance to escape from Daleks and try to stop their plan.

Perhaps more obviously, though, Susan finally gets a little more screen time. Although her romance is not very well developed, writer Terry Nation at least gives it a jolly old try. He’s clearly not a romance writer, but he even takes it so far as to give Susan and David an on-screen kiss, which is vastly superior to the romantic endings some Companions have had (:cough: Leela :cough:).

And then we reach the iconic First Doctor speech. “One day, I shall come back,” he tells Susan, who he has locked out of the TARDIS to force her to stay on a ruined Earth with her new beau. “Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.”

I’ve always been kind of angry with the Doctor for treating Susan that way. But this time, somehow, it wasn’t as hard to swallow, and I’m not sure why that is the case. Perhaps this time I bought into Susan’s attachment to David more than I had before. Perhaps it’s just that I was expecting it, mulling the idea over in the back of my mind all along. Or perhaps I’ve just had that much more time to think about familial separation from both generational directions.

Whatever the case, I’ve come out the other side of this rewatch with an overall more positive impression of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. While there are still a few cringe-worthy “product of its time” moments, it’s a relatively solid story that speaks to both the continuing will to resist oppression and the mental and emotional exhaustion that come with that. It’s a good reminder that even though those in power might, like the Daleks, insist that “resistance is useless,” it is instead one of the most important—and human—experiences we can ever have.

Read more →

Brain-twisting Bonbon

Review of The Edge of Destruction (#3)

DVD Release Date: 24 Mar 09
Original Air Date: 08 – 15 Feb 1964
Doctors/Companions: One, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: The Daleks (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: Marco Polo (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)

The broadcast schedule for the current, new series has disrupted the timing for my usual monthly DVD reviews, but I decided not to let it replace my November edition of the Highs and Lows series entirely. That’s why there’s this bonus Saturday post!

Fortunately for me, the adventure that was already slated for this month is one of the shortest in Classic Who, so rewatching it was not a huge investment in time. Unfortunately, it was a decent investment in brainpower (of which I am in sadly short supply lately).

“The Edge of Destruction” (EoD) comes very very early in the history of the show, preceded only by the pilot adventure (“An Unearthly Child,” which includes the crew’s subsequent trip to “The Cave of Skulls”) and the Doctor’s first-ever encounter with the Daleks (in the eponymously titled story). Viewing it through a lens nearly sixty years of media evolution onwards, it feel surprisingly modern. Sure, it has all the trappings of ’60s Who, feeling more like a stage play than what we would recognize as television today, but it has an almost psycho-drama bent, and keeps the viewer on the back foot almost the whole way through.

Set entirely inside the TARDIS (we’ll ignore the obvious budgetary reasons for that, and pretend it’s just great storytelling), EoD begins with the Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara all getting thrown to the floor and knocked unconscious. As they slowly come to their senses, disoriented and barely recognizing each other, they quickly realize something is amiss. Just what that is—and who is to blame—is much less clear.

The rapid changes in circumstances and in what each person on the TARDIS thinks they know, about both the situation and each other, keeps the viewer almost as confused as the characters. And for someone who is used to a Doctor who cares deeply about their Companions and who is always the cleverest person in the room, the way this early incarnation handles the situation can be unexpected to the point of being off-putting.

But when one remembers that none of these people quite trust each other yet—in fact, the Doctor basically kidnapped Ian and Barbara to prevent them from exposing his secrets—it makes more sense. The Doctor was still getting used to humans (though at this point we were years away from the Doctor admitting he wasn’t one), the humans had just come off of a life-threatening situation they’d gotten into because the Doctor had deceived them for his own selfish ends, and the show as a whole was still finding its bearings.

I think EoD deserves its reputation as one of the “Highs”—it’s #30 on the trusty io9 list—because it really does provide an interestingly convoluted plot line. It may be both short and somewhat pedantic, as these early stories were wont to be (with some questionable science, by current standards), but it’s a snappy and dramatic little story that doesn’t drag on. This little bonbon twists your brain in all the best ways. Give it a go!

Read more →

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.

Read more →

The Keys to Clime

3 Comments

Review of The Keys of Marinus (#5)
DVD Release Date: 05 Jan 10
Original Air Date: 11 Apr – 16 May 1964
Doctors/Companions: One, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: Marco Polo (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: The Aztecs (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)

For the third installment of this series on Stories with a Bad Reputation, we turn to the oft-overlooked, fifth-ever serial The Keys of Marinus. In overall rankings, it doesn’t generally sink all the way to the bottom, but it almost always ends up in the lowest tier, rarely rising into the top half.

I’m sure part of that dismissal is due to the fact that it is, after all, a Hartnell story, and many fans—especially those who grew up on a faster-paced, all-color style of televisual storytelling—struggle to get through stories from this era. Further, it comes between the lost-but-much-revered Marco Polo and The Aztecs, perhaps my favorite First Doctor adventure. It’s hardly fair to ask Keys to compete with them, and yet there we are.

Despite being the neglected middle child, though, Keys has its own brand of charm. It’s a quirky little story that, in its own way, reminds me of the Fourth Doctor series The Key to Time (TKtT) that would come some fifteen years later. It begins with a setup wherein our TARDIS team is tasked with collecting several pieces of a larger whole necessary to save the planet Marinus (here, to restore a worldwide climate of law and order; to restore the balance of the universe, in TKtT), then takes them off to disparate adventures in each episode as they collect the items.

Read more →

Setting the Standard

4 Comments

Review of The Five Doctors (#129)
DVD Release Date: 05 Aug 08
Original Air Date: 25 Nov 1983
Doctors/Companions: Five, One, Two, Three, Four (cameo), Tegan, Turlough, Susan, the Brigadier, Sarah Jane, Romana II (cameo)
Stars: Peter Davison, Richard Hurndall, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, (Tom Baker), Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson, Carole Ann Ford, Nicholas Courtney, Elisabeth Sladen, (Lalla Ward)
Preceding Story: The King’s Demons (Five, Tegan, Turlough, Kamelion)
Succeeding Story: Warriors of the Deep (Five, Tegan, Turlough)

With tomorrow’s anniversary of the show’s beginnings, I felt now would be an appropriate time to look back at a different celebration of its history. Though this year we mark fifty-four years since the show’s inception, 1983 was merely twenty, and the Powers That Beeb decided they couldn’t let such a large, round number go unnoticed.

Here in the post-fiftieth-anniversary era, we think of that celebration as having pulled out all the stops, but really, it was The Five Doctors that set the standard. And while, like Moffat, JNT didn’t get everyone he wanted to participate, he nonetheless pulled together a remarkable cast, including—in a way—all five incarnations of the Doctor who had appeared up to that point.

While First Doctor William Hartnell had (just barely) managed perform a part in the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors, he was already eight years dead by the time this next milestone rolled around. Rather than exclude his Doctor entirely, though, JNT simply recast Richard Hurndall in the role, much like David Bradley has taken over the same in the modern era. But much like Eccleston for the fiftieth, Tom Baker could not be convinced to reprise his own Fourth Doctor (reportedly because he thought it was too soon).

Read more →

A History Worth Preserving

Review of The Aztecs: SE (#6)

DVD Release Date: 12 Mar 13
Original Air Date: 23 May – 13 Jun 1964
Doctor/Companion: One, Susan, Ian, Barbara
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: The Keys of Marinus (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: The Sensorites (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)

I’ve mentioned several times before how fond I am of this story, and I don’t mind saying it again. I have to admit, though, that when I got the Special Edition DVD and looked at all the extras two things went through my mind. The first was, “Wow – this disk is all about the extras!” The second was, “When am I ever going to find time to watch all these extras?”

The story itself is a lovely little four-parter that follows the TARDIS crew to 15th C. Mexico, taking up about 100 minutes of viewing time. By contrast, even ignoring the minor entries like the ubiquitous Photo Gallery, the extras comprise more than twice that much material. That certainly presents a challenge for the reviewer, but it’s a challenge I’m willing to undertake for your sake, gentle readers.

I can hardly praise The Aztecs highly enough. So early in the history of Our Show, it introduces – or at least hammers home – the idea that history is not to be trifled with lightly. It’s also one of the earliest remaining stories that can really show us how much the Doctor has mellowed to these humans who – let’s call a spade a spade – he kidnapped in order to keep them from exposing him and his granddaughter as the aliens they were. Not only that, it shows a more tender side of him, as he quite frankly falls in love with a human for the first time we see (yes, Rose, we all know you thought you were special).

Read more →

Revolutionary Television

Review of The Reign of Terror (#8)
DVD Release Date: 12 Feb 13
Original Air Date: 08 Aug – 12 Sep 1964
Doctor/Companion: One, Susan, Ian, Barbara
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: The Sensorites (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: Planet of Giants (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)

One thing I love about the very earliest Who is that it’s so clearly taking its self-defined role as educational television to heart. When we first meet the Daleks, we learn about magnetism as the Doctor breaks the group out of a cell, and there were several instances, like in The Aztecs, where we learn a bit about historical events and cultures. In fact, it’s not till some time later that the supernatural twists to the historical tales get added.

So when I sat down to watch The Reign of Terror, I kind of knew I was in for another of those “pure historicals,” in which all the events swirling around our heroes are ones that actually occurred in our own past. I have to admit I wasn’t quite prepared for how heavy-handed it would be. My jaw may actually have dropped when Robespierre straight out stated, “If this plot is successful, tomorrow, the 27th of July, 1794, will be a date for history!”

Aside from such blatant attempts at pedagogy, though, there’s actually quite an elaborate bit of intrigue at the heart of the story. Though elements like a burning house and “Madame Guillotine” make the story a little dark at times, the spies, imprisonment, and threats of betrayal at every turn keep the audience on its toes, even if the TARDIS crew is not always quite as careful at they perhaps should be.

Read more →

A Dimensional Analysis

1 Comment

Review of Planet of Giants (#9)
DVD Release Date: 11 Sep 12
Original Air Date: 31 Oct – 14 Nov 1964
Doctor/Companion: One, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Susan Foreman
Stars: William Hartnell, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Carole Ann Ford
Preceding Story: The Reign of Terror (One, Ian, Barbara, Susan)
Succeeding Story: The Dalek Invasion of Earth (One, Ian, Barbara, Susan)

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this story. It’s not one that shows up on the common Best Of or Worst Of lists, so I didn’t really have much in the way of preconceived notions, but I guess I was prepared to be underwhelmed. It was quite a nice surprise, then, that I found it so engaging.

Let me start with a bit of history. Apparently, the idea that eventually became Planet of Giants – that is, that the crew would be miniaturized, but on present-day Earth – was at one point intended to be the series pilot, rather than An Unearthly Child. Further, it was scripted – and shot – in four parts, but the Head of Serials didn’t like it as a four-parter, and so the final two episodes were edited together into one, which is how it was transmitted (this all becomes particularly relevant when we come to the extras).

As a result, there are pieces that don’t quite make perfect sense, but overall it hangs together quite well, and manages to combine early environmentalism with murder/intrigue and a science fiction twist (since our heroes are roughly the size of “an inch”). I suspect that when it first went out, the audiences would have been pleasantly surprised by the revelation that a mishap on landing had shrunk the TARDIS and all its occupants that way. It plays pretty well, even when you know what’s coming. In retrospect, though, I think it’s better that it got shunted to the second season, so the audience was familiar with the TARDIS’s usual workings before throwing in this new dimension.

Read more →

Retro-View #1: Take It From the Top

2 Comments

An Unearthly Child (Story #1, 1963)
             and
The Romans (Story #12, 1965)
Viewed 30 Apr 2012

Doctor/Companion:   One, Susan, Ian, Barbara / One, Ian, Barbara, Vicki
Stars:  William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Maureen O’Brien
Preceding Story:  None / The Rescue (One, Ian, Barbara, Vicki)
Succeeding Story:  The Daleks / The Web Planet (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara / Ian, Barbara, Vicki)
Notable Aspects:

  • First ever episode

I’ve got something a little different for you this time. I have a dear friend of a slightly different generation who remembers watching Doctor Who in its early days. She would have been within the target age range when it first graced the air waves in 1963, but – as an American – didn’t really watch until college, and occasionally at that. From what she tells me, she watched off and on, but hasn’t seen it in ages – probably since Four’s tenure.

Some time over the past year, we got to talking about Who, and she said she was really interested in seeing what they’d done with it (meaning post-Hiatus). Since then, our plan has gradually morphed into a sort of variation on a theme, similar to and yet different from both my regular Nu-Views and The Experiment of Adventures with the Wife in Space. G is not a novice viewer, but neither is she someone who has followed the show religiously for decades. I’ll be showing her a sample of each Doctor and sharing with her what I love about each of them, and she’ll be telling me what she remembers and how it strikes her now.

So here we go!

Read more →

A Sense of History

2 Comments

Review of The Sensorites (#7)
DVD Release Date:  14 Feb 12
Original Air Date:  20 Jun – 01 Aug 1964
Doctor/Companion:  One, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Susan Foreman
Stars:  William Hartnell, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Carole Ann Ford
Preceding Story:  The Aztecs (One, Ian, Barbara, Susan)
Succeeding Story:  The Reign of Terror (One, Ian, Barbara, Susan)

No one seems to have much love for The Sensorites. If I’ve heard it mentioned at all, it’s usually with some degree of distaste. Frankly, I don’t understand that reaction, since to me, Sensorites doesn’t seem any less palatable that most of One’s stories, and better than a few others (like the regrettable Web Planet).

There are actually some pretty classic literary themes here: cultural misunderstanding, political intrigues, and the TARDIS crew caught in the middle, as usual. Despite a rather… unusual creature design (oh, those floppy feet), the concept of the Sensorites themselves is fairly intriguing. I don’t remember many races across science fiction that use both telepathy and verbal communication, for example.

As the story gets rolling, I’m immediately reminded of how much I bloody love Barbara (totally with Sue here). Her absence in episodes 4 and 5 may be part of why the story seemed to drag somewhat through the middle. The plot itself has some interesting ideas woven in, but to a modern audience, anyway, it doesn’t seem terribly sophisticated. The “big surprise finish” in episode 6 (“A Desperate Venture”) is not so surprising, the rather obvious clues having been dropped for several episodes.

Read more →