The Seeds of Doom - Episode 3

I always feel bad when I accuse an episode of padding but in the case of the previous one, I feel that I was in the right. As I started to watch this episode I was hoping that things would improve a lot.

The explosions at the cliffhanger were really good and they looked just as good at the beginning of this episode. The story moves back to blightey and the shift of the story seems to have happened now. I cant say that I am totally sad to be leaving Antartica because whilst I did like the base under siege vibe that was going on, it does mean that the story can open up and more characters can become involved. There is a scene that occurs where the Doctor and Sarah are talking to Dunbar and Thackeray and its clear that the Doctor and Sarah are facing an uphill battle to persuade Dunbar and Thackeray of whats going on. There was a moment where Sarah seemed to be going back to the early days of her character by being a bit feisty.

After being sidelined in the previous episode, Chase becomes more involved in the story. He’s wonderfully bad in and doesn’t seem like he would be out of place at a pantomime playing some over the top character. That’s not to say that this gets in the way from being a believable villain but in this episode its clear that he is the main villain which is an improvement on the previous episode. Chase’s disregard for humanity is made evident when he reacts to the loss of a pod more than of human life.

Miss Ducat does seem like more padding but it was at least less noticeable and it was worth it just because of Sylvia Coleridge who played Ducat. Sadly her part in the story is all too brief but at least it does serve a purpose and that is to get the Doctor to that long overdue scene with Chase. I think that when it does happen it’s a great moment and Tony Beckley is more than capable of holding his own against Tom Baker.

The grounds of his house are rather nice to look at. Thankfully we get to see a fair amount of it because there are two chases which are quite good action sequences. After the poor attempt to try and convince us that by painting a quarry white that it could pass as Antarctica, its good to enjoy some location filming and Douglas Camfield directs these scenes very well and actually directs the studio scenes rather well. It seems like he was having an off day in the previous episode.

The episode’s cliffhanger is a strong one because it involves Sarah and she is about to be infected by the pod which about to open up. The Doctor has a birds eye view of this and the question will be just how close the Doctor will leave it before getting involved. I really liked this episode and thought that it was much better than the previous one. There was some excitement going on during the course of the previous 25 minutes and whilst I am still not sold on the story I can’t deny that I have been intrigued by what’s been going on.