The Savages - Episode 2

The next episode starts of with a quite a creepy opening as there is a strange figure coming towards Dodo. Sadly its not as bad as it seems as the stranger just goes past her. The improvement of Dodo continues in this episode with Dodo being very feisty towards people around her. It shows what can be done with the character when there is the right story and setting. Despite knowing that this is Peter Purves’ final story it seems at the moment that he’s going to get one of those surprise exits that come out of the blue. The Doctor is the one that explains what is going on and that is the locals are trying to suck the life-force out of people. It’s a pretty good plot point.

With the story not being on video, it’s down to important stuff like music to help the story and it definelty works here as its quite effective. The performances from everyone are all pretty good and even though the story does seem to lack something even though it moves along at a pretty good pace. It’s the most the William Hartnell has been used in a story for sometime after weeks of Peter Purves doing most of the story. Though due to the fact that the Doctor falls victim to the life-sucker device thing. It’s this that forms the cliffhanger and its good that the Doctor does something in this episode because at the beginning it seemed like he was just going to get an easy ride like in The Celestial Toymaker.

This is a good episode but only cause things move along at a pace that you don’t really realise until the end that not very much has happened. It’s a good trick by ISB and the story does seem slightly better than I remember it so I’m looking forward to the remaining two episodes.