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Draconian Approach

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Review of Frontier in Space (#67)

DVD Release Date: 02 Mar 10
Original Air Date: 24 Feb – 31 Mar 1973
Doctors/Companions: Three, Jo Grant
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story: Carnival of Monsters (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: Planet of the Daleks (Three, Jo)

As I took this penultimate entry in the Everything Else series off the shelf, I realized I remembered almost nothing about it. The cover image gave me some clues (“Oh, yeah—the Draconians” [though I honestly didn’t even remember their name accurately]; “The Master? Ohhhh… Isn’t this Delgado’s last serial?”), but my recollections were so vague that I questioned the things that were jogged loose. A few of those general impressions turned out to have been based in reality, but there was precious little of substance.

Writer Malcolm Hulke is generally considered among the better writers of this era, so when I saw his name on the screen, I had high hopes. Among the things I remembered was that the Draconians were a cool species that I wish we’d seen more of. However, in the end I felt somewhat disappointed. It’s not that the story was bad, by any means. It just wasn’t particularly innovative. (I began to understand how this adventure ended up in Everything Else.)

To begin, there’s a bit of “everything but the kitchen sink” energy in this six-parter. First we get our new supposed antagonists, the “creatively”-named Draconians. When the TARDIS nearly collides with an Earth-ship and the Doctor and Jo are mistaken for Dragons (an equally “creative” epithet), the conflict seems to be between humans and Draconians. By the end of the first episode, though, we realize the Ogrons (introduced in the previous year’s Day of the Daleks, and last seen in cameo in the preceding story) are really to blame. It’s not until we get into the third episode that we discover it is the Master who is behind the Ogrons.

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Welcome to Year Thirteen

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Triskaidekaphobes may not care for the idea that I’m highlighting this as the thirteenth year of the blog, but in my household thirteen is actually one of our favorite numbers. Further, we’ve just ended the Thirteenth Doctor’s era, and I can look forward to meeting Jodie Whittaker herself at Gallifrey One next month. I’d say Year Thirteen is worth celebrating.

This year will, as I’ve hinted before, be the last for the blog. Now that I’ve finally sold some fiction (you can find my first published story here, if you’re interested; I use a pen name), I want to focus more of my time and energy on that kind of writing. There are also several other personal stressors that have ramped up recently, and I simply have less energy to dedicate to blogging.

That’s not to say this year will be lax. I hope to be able to announce my part in that project to which I alluded a couple of years ago. I’ll be reporting on my experiences at Gally as usual, with the bonus of having one of my kiddos with me to provide fresh eyes. And I will finish up my Everything Else series of reviews of the Classic adventures.

Given that there are only five of those left, the blog schedule gets a bit loose around mid-year. But here is the schedule for those final five stories:

  • Jan 25: The Dalek Invasion of Earth
  • Feb 08: Enlightenment
  • Mar 22: The Invasion of Time
  • Apr 26: Frontier in Space
  • May 24: The Pirate Planet
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Standing the Test of Time

Review of The Time Warrior (#70)

DVD Release Date: 22 Dec 20
Original Air Date: 15 Dec 1973 – 05 Jan 1974
Doctors/Companions: Three, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: The Green Death (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Three, Sarah Jane, the Brigadier)

Unlike most of the other entries in the Everything Else series, The Time Warrior is one about which I remembered quite a lot even before watching it again. Even though I’ve previously only covered it as a NuView (way back in the second month of the blog), it’s long been one of my favorite Third Doctor stories.

Among other things, it’s got a lot of firsts: the first Sarah Jane Smith story, the first appearance of a Sontaran, and the first ever mention of Gallifrey. It’s also got Jon Pertwee buckling some swash, scientists from the present day being used to nefarious purpose in the past, and an overall strong story that holds together well.

Almost as soon as I hit “Play,” further details came flooding back. To begin, writer Robert Holmes’s name showed up in the opening credits. “Ah yes,” I said to myself, “that explains the ‘strong story’ bit.”

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Sink or Swim

Review of The Sea Devils (#62)

DVD Release Date: 03 Jun 08
Original Air Date: 26 Feb – 01 Apr 1972
Doctors/Companions: Three, Jo Grant
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story: The Curse of Peladon (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: The Mutants (Three, Jo)

After last week’s special aired, I knew I was in for a treat when I came back to re-watch this adventure. The potential to compare and contrast the depictions of the Sea Devils in this, their initial outing with their most recent on-screen appearance with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor felt like a golden opportunity.

And since Delgado is my favorite Master, despite his ubiquity during this era of the show, I enjoy watching what have become his “usual tricks” play out here where they can still take the Doctor by surprise. To wit, his “team up with someone else to destroy humanity in order to upset the Doctor” game.

Because that’s what this story boils down to. The Master has found these “sea devils”—who only gain that moniker from the rantings of traumatized sea fort workman—and decided to manipulate them to his own ends. The Doctor recognizes them as kin to the Silurians, and they give the same account of their reasons for going into hibernation as that other reptilian species. They also [spoilers] come to a similar end, having at one point reached a tentative peace with the humans thanks to the Doctor before the British military makes a first-strike move.

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Time Well Spent

Review of The Time Monster (#64)

DVD Release Date: 06 Jul 10
Original Air Date: 20 May – 24 Jun 1972
Doctors/Companions: Three, Jo Grant
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story: The Mutants (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story: The Three Doctors (Three, Jo, Two, One, the Brigadier)

The fascinating thing about doing a year full of Highs & Lows like this is that the experience highlights just how subjective such labels can be. This month’s entry is a case in point.

While the list I’ve been using from io9 compiled by Charlie Jane Anders ranks The Time Monster as #238 of 254 (leaving it ahead of only 6% of other stories), it is well known to Verity! podcast listeners that Lizbeth Myles ranks it as one of best stories of all time (or, at the very least, in her personal list of favorites). That leaves a wide range of opinion into which to fit my own assessment.

Predictably, I fall somewhere between the two extremes, though closer to Lizbeth’s end of the scale. Perhaps it’s because I’m already a fan of the Pertwee era, and Delgado’s Master in particular, that I didn’t find the “preponderance of fluff” (as Charlie Jane put it) so objectionable. Some of that fluff includes gems like the “time sensor” (which, when we see it face-on, is shaped… perhaps more suggestively than entirely appropriate for a family show) and a device the Doctor constructs out of household items in order to interfere with the Master’s time experiments, the latter of which is one of the few things that consistently stick in my mind about this story.

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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.

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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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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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The Tedium of Peladon

Review of The Monster of Peladon (#73)
DVD Release Date: 04 May 10
Original Air Date: 23 Mar – 27 Apr 1974
Doctors/Companions: Three, Sarah Jane Smith
Stars: Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen
Preceding Story: Death to the Daleks (Three, Sarah Jane)
Succeeding Story: Planet of the Spiders (Three, Sarah Jane, the Brigadier)

For the last couple of years, as long-time readers may recall, I’ve been introducing my daughters to both modern and Classic Who. During one such spate of enthusiasm, they agreed to watch The Monster of Peladon with me.

I can’t remember now how exactly we landed on that selection. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the girls wanting to see more Sarah Jane, and being enamored of the idea of hearing her “There’s nothing ‘only’ about being a girl, Your Majesty” speech. And to their credit, they actually enjoyed the adventure—and I didn’t hate it.

But I was not ready to come back to it so soon (relatively speaking). It’s not that it’s actively awful, despite its bottom 5% ranking in io9’s Best-to-Worst list (coming in at #243 of 254); it’s just kind of… boring. Although I should’ve known better, given that it’s a Pertwee-era story, I had forgotten it was six episodes long rather than four. There was some serious resigned sighing when I realized what lay in front of me for my re-watch.

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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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