The War Machines - Episode 2

The story doesn’t waste much time in continuing with the story. After the brief reprise it’s back to the story and the plan. The plan seems to become more confusing especially in terms of how they managed to get the workers to co-operate so quickly. There is a strange thing at the beginning where they call the Doctor ‘Doctor Who’. It’s always been Doctor and in the very first story it was thought that his name might be Doctor Foreman but this seems like a mistake by someone in production. The part of the episode where the tramp meets a sticky end is quite a good little scene as he seems nice enough and the whole thing was rather well done and the tramp did seem to have come straight out of an adaptation of Oliver Twist. The scene ends with the first full shot of a War Machine. It’s not the greatest thing ever designed as its bulkier than a Dalek, doesn’t seem to do very much apart from destroy cardboard boxes and when it fires at people it misses them. Also they cant communicate with anyone and just not a good creation.

The final scene of Dodo is quite a good one. Its where WOTAN tries to hypnotise the Doctor and after he puts the phone down there is the moment where Dodo thinks that he has been taken over WOTAN. After a moment of the Doctor trying to get Dodo’s mind cleared, she’s packed off to Sir Charles’ house where his wife will take care of her. That’s the last time that she will ever been seen again and that’s effectively her goodbye scene and it happens half way through the episode. It’s a shame that she wasn’t given a better exit as even though she was annoying at times, she had redeemed herself somewhat in the previous episode and every companion deserves better than what Jackie Lane got here.

One thing that I like is the location filming. Setting it in Modern day London means that we get some great scenes outside and it allows us in a weird kind of way to see 1966 London. The filming lends something different to the story that we haven’t had for a long time and that a bit of reality which is a funny thing to want in a science fiction drama. The whole feel of the story is much more real than other stories this season and its also the characters that have helped with this and in particular Anneke Wills and Michael Craze who have immediately striking as Polly and Ben respectively. There is a bit of feistiness between them but its not that often. Sir Charles Summer (William Mervyn) is quite likeable and seems like he’s designed to be an ally of the Doctor’s. Even Professor Brett (John Harvey) and Major Green (Alan Curtis) have been effective villains.

I think that this is another episode which doesn’t allow you take a breath. It starts from the very beginning and continues until the very end and I’m really enjoying this story which I think is only let down by the weak way that Jackie Lane was written out. Other than that the second half of this adventure is just going to be as good as the first half.