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Tag: Victoria

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Review of The Web of Fear (#41)

iTunes Release Date: 11 Oct 13
Original Air Date: 03 Feb – 09 Mar 1968
Doctor/Companion: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story: The Enemy of the World (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story: Fury from the Deep (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

The recovery of two back-to-back stories from the sorely underrepresented Troughton era of the show feels almost too good to be true (though them being found together makes a fair amount of sense). Yet here they are, and The Web of Fear starts up where the cliffhanger ending of The Enemy of the World left off.

Episode One isn’t what’s got Who fans’ collective panties in a bunch, though; it’s the only one that had remained in the archives. So although watching the cliffhanger resolution is more meaningful in context, having seen Enemy Episode Six for oneself, what follows is the familiar setup we’ve already seen (that is, if one had bothered to track down a copy). It is, in essence, your basic “our heroes get themselves into a pickle” episode.

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Friend of My Heart

Review of The Enemy of the World (#40)

iTunes Release Date: 11 Oct 13
Original Air Date: 23 Dec 1967 – 27 Jan 1968
Doctor/Companion: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story: The Ice Warriors (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story: The Web of Fear (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

I can’t even describe the thrill I felt watching The Enemy of the World unfold before my very eyes. I’d long since inured myself to the idea that my only chance to see Troughton in his double role as the Doctor and Salamander was to watch Episode Three, which had previously been the only one remaining in the archives. And while I’d read both a full synopsis and the BBC’s photonovelization before, it’s a completely different experience to see it for oneself.

For anyone who has never seen the Second Doctor in action, you could hardly ask for a better introduction. I’ll admit it’s probably an advantage to know him so one can appreciate the differences between Troughton’s two characters better, but the story itself is a real cracker. Each episode unfolds another layer of intrigue until we see what a truly tangled web the players have woven.

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Revival of the Fittest

Review of The Ice Warriors (#39)
DVD Release Date: 10 Sep 13
Original Air Date: 11 Nov – 16 Dec 1967
Doctor/Companion: Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars: Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story: The Abominable Snowmen (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story: The Enemy of the World (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

For some reason, Troughton’s second season (Season 5, by the original count) was into cold climes. Starting things off with the cryogenic Tomb of the Cybermen, it proceeded on to Tibet and The Abominable Snowmen before landing the TARDIS crew in the glacier-covered future wasteland of The Ice Warriors.

Regardless of the seeming repetition of setting, I was glad to see another Troughton story I hadn’t had the privilege of watching before. Even when you’ve read a blow-by-blow plot synopsis, seeing it on the screen in front of you is a different kettle of fish. Besides, how can anyone resist any performance involving that infamous cosmic hobo?

As with many early stories, one has to take this one with a largish grain of salt. Not only are the Ice Warriors’ creature costumes ridiculously unconvincing (its the rubber mouths that don’t move in sync with the actors’ jaws that really does it), but the science is sorely outdated. The idea that extreme deforestation (not that the script calls it that) would lead to less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might have been a believable hypothesis at the time, but these days we’re seeing the opposite effect. So the very premise comes across as extremely retro-futuristic.

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Buried Treasure

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Review of The Tomb of the Cybermen: SE (#37)
DVD Release Date:  13 Mar 12
Original Air Date:  02 – 23 Sep 1967
Doctor/Companion:  Two, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield
Stars:  Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling
Preceding Story:  The Evil of the Daleks (Two, Jamie, Victoria)
Succeeding Story:  The Abominable Snowmen (Two, Jamie, Victoria)

This particular story seems to engender reactions on polar opposite ends of the scale. Either it’s the greatest Cybermen story of all time (it’s reportedly Matt Smith’s favorite), or it’s racist schlock. I personally find myself somewhere in the middle. There are distinctly racist facets, I can’t deny that. However, they don’t put me off the story entirely because I find I’m able to approach them as “historical context” – that is, I can recognize that society has evolved in the past 45 years, and like everything, Tomb is a product of its time. I don’t have to agree with the presentation of the dark-skinned Toberman as a nigh-mute servant (“dumb muscle,” if you will) to find the rest of the story entertaining.

If we’re going to nitpick about yesterday’s attitudes that irritate us today, we may as well talk about the women, too. As actress Shirley Cooklin (Kaftan) puts it (see Commentary Track 2, below), female characters in that day and age were primarily “set dressing.” The dark-skinned characters were the baddies; the ladies were there to look good. Interestingly enough, the character Victoria even comments with frustration on her lot when told she doesn’t get to go with the others down to the catacombs: “Who’d be a woman?” (It doesn’t help that the spaceship captain with the bad fake-American accent responds with “How would you know, honey?”, marking her as even further down the social ladder due to her youth.) Despite all this, I can’t help enjoying Tomb.

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