The Mind of Evil - Episode 6

Right, I’m going to start off with the problem of the cliffhanger. Now the angle of the gun seems to indicate that Mailer is holding the gun and fires it but in fact it’s the Brigadier that has shot Mailer. It does lead to a nice thank you from the Doctor when say “Do you think for once in your life you could arrive before the nick of time?”. That’s as close as anyone would get to a thank you from him. With the riot pretty much over, it means that the final episode will focus on stopping the Master from launching the rocket and destroying the machine.

The effect of the machine moving is quite basic does look quite good. I think the scene where it manages to break free and out of the processing room is very good and its quite impressive on how much mess he made in the room. The way that the machine can be controlled does seem to come out of nowhere but when you stop and think about it then it becomes quite obvious. Barnham has been in the background for the whole story and now is when he becomes integral to the story. Once they figure this out the machine ceases to be a threat which I suppose is the point as the main threat is the Master. The shot of the creature in the machine is quite gruesome and it’s all down to the eye which even though it’s clearly fake but does look quite real.

It’s quite strange that the Doctor is willing to hand over the dematerialisation circuit to the Master’s TARDIS so that he can leave Earth. However it does lead to the very good big scene at the aircraft hangar which ends with the Master fleeing with the dematerialisation circuit. The big scene of the episode sees chaos run rampant and it’s needed so that the Master can get away without any problems. It’s a shame that Barnham got killed as I thought that it was the wrong thing to do with such a likeable character. There have been other good supporting characters who have helped make this story what it is. Michael Sheard is a Doctor Who regular who appeared in this as Dr Summers and despite being a bit dim when he tried to get Barnham back to the sick bay, he has been a good solid character.

The final scene with the Master and the Doctor is a good one because it gives the impression that the Master will be gone for quite some time. Of course the reality of it that he will appear in the next episode but at the time viewers in 1971 would have assumed that it would be the last they would see for some time. As a story it’s a good one, not a classic but still an enjoyable adventure. I think that on this occasion six episode was too long for this story and it would have better as a four parter.

The Mind of Evil - Episode 5

The penultimate episode of the story sees things go wrong at the worst prison in TV. Even on Porridge they had things run better.

I like how Mailer and the prisoners start to get the jitters and this forces the Master to stop spending time with Yates and deal with Mailer. I think that Mailer is a very good character and he seems to have just come off the set of ‘The Professionals’. He spends most of the time twirling the gun around like he doesn’t know what he’s doing with it yet he’s still a good character. Major Cosworth is a comedy character who seems to have come out of a Carry On film. It seems that he’s been put in purely because Yates is tied up with the Master and Benton is suppose to be sick. Part of me thinks that he doesn’t serve a purpose really to the story but another part of me thinks that he could have been a useful comedy tool in this story.

I remember writing how the Brigadier seemed side-lined in the previous story but he seems to be making up for that in this story. He’s really in his element and it’s the most active I’ve seen him this season. I like how he does a terrible Dick Van Dyke accent pretending to be a delivery man. When the Brigadier and the rest of UNIT storm the prison it’s a great scene though its another one from this era where it could have been improved with some incidental music.

It’s good to see the Doctor and the Master working together even though its not on the greatest of terms for the Doctor. It seems like the Master has realised that he cant control the machine the way that he hoped and by getting the Doctor involved it implies that he hasn’t thought things through. A bit like his Auton plan from the previous story. The performances from Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado were very good and they were both just as good as each other and they compliment each other very well. Katy Manning puts in a good performance as well as does a nice move when she tries to help the Doctor get away by stopping Mailer in his tracks.

It’s also good to see the Doctor and Jo getting some nice quality time together as he ends a scene with him telling Jo about sharing a cell with Walter Raleigh. He’s such a name dropper. It’s been a while since the Doctor’s done it and its always fun when he does it.

The cliffhanger is a good one as the Doctor has a gun pointed at him and instead of ending there we actually get to hear the gun go off but to be honest the problem with this cliffhanger is going to be made apparent and I will point it out in the next review. It doesn’t feel like we are about to reach the final episode but it does feel like things have picked up.

The Mind of Evil - Episode 4

I like the scene where the Master tries to show the machine who is boss and yet he is struggling to stay in control. When the machine is on, we see what his fear is and it’s the Doctor who is laughing at him. It’s a great little scene and it’s done really well. It’s the first time that the Master has shown any fear and it shows that behind the bravado, the Master suffers from the same problems as the Doctor and everyone else. Humiliation seems like odd fear but I suppose if your going to be scarred of someone laughing at you then it would be the Doctor.

Another scene that’s good is when the Doctor and Jo are reunited and the Doctor just wants to rest and the scene ends with Jo sobbing on the Doctor’s chest. It’s a nice emotional scene.

It takes until this episode to see a bit more of the Master’s plan. Luckily the Master shows us what his plan is and how Mailer becomes part of it. It was needed because it was slightly odd that they had taken control of the prison but not left. It was all revealed that the prison wasn’t far off the route that the rocket would be taking. The inevitable attack of on Captain Yates and the rocket was a good scene. It’s good how Yates gets to do something good for once. He starts off by locating the convicts and unfortunately gets caught. After the humiliating moment when he gets punched by Jo in the previous story, this is when he gets to be something close to an action hero. Well maybe hero is stretching it a bit but at least he gets to be a bit more manly than normal.

After three episodes of sitting in the one room, the Keller Machine can now move. This means that it becomes more dangerous than if it were just in the one room. I suppose it was the logical next step as all they would need to do is to just never go in that room again. It’s odd that we know very little about what’s inside the machine apart from the fact that the Master bought it too earth. I think due to what’s going on around the Doctor, the contents of the Keller machine is sort of forgotten.

Sadly the problems from the previous episode were evident again in this episode but it wasn’t as bad as before. Due to the action stuff with Yates and the stealing of the rocket, the episode seems better and as a result the story picked up. The padding was less noticeable than before and there were some good moments from everyone. Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning are really good together and I like how the Doctor makes a joke about how he has an amazing ability to go from being at deaths door to perfectly fine. With two more episodes, it seems like the story is starting to take shape and is heading to a great conclusion. Only time will tell.

The Mind of Evil - Episode 3

I decided that I couldn’t take the audio version any longer and instead dug out my old VHS copy which sadly is in black and white. I suppose it’s better than nothing. This episode is where the problems of the six part adventure start to rear its ugly head. It’s weird how seven parters work but six seems to be a problem. I’ve not mentioned before now how Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning have been since the previous story. I think that Jo Grant has come on a lot since that previous story and doesn’t seem so green. The relationship between the two seems better and more equal that in Terror.

I still think that the cliffhanger is rather weak though it looks slightly better in the reprise. The only thing that lets it down is a brief shot with the dragon in the background and it does look like a bloke in a suit. Once the dragon had disappeared, it meant that Chin Lee was a good person now although I suspect that her usefulness is now coming to an end. As she is a goodie, she is rather boring. When we return to the prison, we see that the riot has progressed and its developed far more than I had heard during the previous episode. I think that was the problem during the Hartnell and Troughton episodes which weren’t on DVD and that is my attention would wander. Thankfully due to the fact I had the foresight not to sell my VHS copy.

The Master looks good in every scene that he’s in and there’s one shot where he smoking a cigar going towards the prison and he looks like he’s on the way to filming not actually filming. The thing about the Master is that he ends up helping the riot just after it’s been quelled and within a short amount of time has control over the prison. Even by the Master’s standards that’s quick and what it does do is lead to a nice little scene between Roger Delgado and Jon Pertwee where the Doctor gets to do a bit of action before being captured.

The cliffhanger is a bit better than the previous one but that’s because the Doctor is in danger and there is no clear sign as to how he’s going to get out of it. As the Doctor is handcuffed to the chair by the Keller machine, the Doctor gets more flames of fear as well as shots of Daleks and possibly even a Cyberman. The problem with the episode is that not a lot happens. Its all about the riot and that’s fine for a short amount of time but after a while I just wanted something to happen and it wasn’t until the very end that this happened. I think that a tiny bit of padding may have been used in this episode but its still a good story and there is still some good stuff to come.

The Mind of Evil - Episode 2

At the end of the previous episode, we learnt that the Doctor seemed to be scarred of fire. It’s nice how we learn about how the Doctor saw a world burn which explains why he is scarred of it. It’s a rare moment of learning something new about the Doctor and despite the development of knowledge that we have learnt in the last couple of seasons, its nice to learn something new. It’s good that Jo is the one that saves the Doctor. The Doctor is rather ungrateful as he tells of Jo for going against his instructions and being there to save him. It does feel like there is a little bit of contempt from the Doctor which is not something that I think I like because it doesn’t feel Doctor-like. If I were Jo and I had gotten anything other than a thankyou then I would have just told him where to get off. But that’s just me.

Neither Benton or Yates come through this episode very well. Yates is made immobile by the Doctor when he tells the Doctor that he needs to see the Brigadier and Benton faints when he is trying to track Chin Lee. I know that they aren’t suppose to be the most reliable characters in the world but they don’t come out of it very well here.

There is a new prisoner called Mailer (played by William Marlowe) who gets introduced in this episode. Within minutes he has managed to get one over on the guards but it’s a small part of the episode which clearly shows that it will become more important to the story in future episodes. I suppose it’s the benefit of a six part story because you can plonk characters into a story but not have them do very much. It makes the viewers aware of them but they can focus on other things until they become relevant.

I like the scene where the Doctor and the Brigadier are talking to Fu Peng and it’s great the Doctor talks in Fu Peng’s language and this is funny because it clear means that the Brigadier is excluding from this conversation. There is another bit of comedy from Nicholas Courtney when the Brigadier corrects the Doctor about the nationality of Fu Peng and its clear to everyone what the Doctor meant. It’s a bad joke (in a good way) but its like the ‘cut off’ joke that he did in ‘Terror of the Autons’. It’s acceptable on the basis that the Brigadier is getting more stressed as he has to maintain the peace at the peace conference and also transport the rocket on the quiet. You wouldn’t want to be the Brigadier at this stage.

We discover that the Master in involved in this episode and some people must be quite delighted that he is back and perhaps in hindsight that might be a problem because there should be a certain amount of time before he returned. The Daleks and the Cybermen returned after a short period of time so the same should have been done for the Master. Despite saying that, its good to have Roger Delgado back as he is brilliant and as I have mentioned before was a brilliant piece of casting.

The cliffhanger for the episode is pretty much the same as the last one as someone (not the Doctor this time) is in a state of fear. I know it worked last time but sometimes you can go to the well too many times and that is the case here as due to the fact that it’s a sort of throwaway character, I don’t really find much to care about which is a shame. I am still enjoying this story and think that elements that seemed totally random are becoming relevant and I think that is due to the writing. I don’t think that I am losing anything by not listening to it on the computer. A good story.

The Mind of Evil - Episode 1

I am listening to the first episode of ‘The Mind of Evil’ on audio. Yes I know that it is on DVD and has been for quite some time however due to the fact that I lent it to someone and forgot until I was just about to watch it. I remember buying the audiobook just before I went on holiday a couple of years ago and so realising my blunder I decided to listen to this until I could get the DVD of my friend.

The story takes place in a prison where there is a strange process which is used on criminals. The process was created by Dr Keller and whats weird is that this is obviously the Master (obvious if you’ve seen this before) and he’s been working on this for a year which implies one of two things. The first is that he was working on this before the events of ‘Terror of the Autons’ or a year has passed since that story. Can’t figure out which it is. What is good is that there is no indication that it could be the Master and absolutely no reference is made to him or the events of the previous story. This is clearly designed to throw us of the scent and think that someone else would be behind it.

The idea that there is a machine that works on fear is a great one. There is nothing that’s more worrying about a machine that seems to have a mind of its own. There appears to be no-one operating it and it can go wherever it wants. The fact that the prisoners seem to go crazy when the machine powers up is a useful tool for the viewer to know when something is going wrong. The officials from the prison range from either incompetent to blasé. I think that they will hopefully develop a bit more as the story progresses but only Dr Summers (Michael Sheard) comes across as someone with some common sense.

I like that there seems to be two random plot strands going on in this story as the whilst the Doctor is dealing with strange deaths, the Brigadier is trying to maintain things at the World Peace Conference. Things are made more difficult by Captain Chin Lee of the Chinese delegation who starts causing trouble on two separate occasion. Firstly to say some papers have been stolen and the second was to report a murder but the Brigadier doesn’t waste anytime in calling her bluff. It must have seemed odd at the time of broadcast as to what the point of this was. Only time would tell but in 1971 it must seem like there is no link to what’s going on at the prison.

The cliffhanger is a good one as the Doctor isn’t in physical harm (kind of) but is in psychological harm as fire starts to appear. I say appear but as I am listening to this on audio I can only imagine that. I think that I am helped by imagining what the scenes in my head. Unlike stories from the Hartnell and Troughton era where I cant imagine what was going on or what things looked like, I know what and how things looked on screen. It’s a good opening episode and the first six part adventure of the Pertwee era looks like it could work better than six parters from the 1960’s.

Inferno - Episode 7

It’s hard to believe that this is the last episode of the season. I only started the Pertwee era on January 24^th. This is because a normal 1960’s season of Doctor Who would be about 39-44 episodes long whereas this season is only 25. At this rate I should rush through these seasons in no time at all.

The story moves back to the first universe and its just as things are starting to get interesting as the drilling gets closer to penetration. You would think that with just 25 minutes to tell the story that they would move quicker than they did. The Doctor appears and he doesn’t get up but is put in bed. Even when he’s unconscious, the Doctor is able to be quite useful and that gets round the problem of making the Doctor useful but not making the jump from universe to universe seem like changing buses. He does have a great moment when he goes slightly mad and starts to wreck some of the instruments.

The way that Stahlman is killed and the drilling is stopped just in the nick of time is quite a tense few moments. I have been very impressed with Olaf Pooley from the very beginning and whilst his transformation happens very quickly in this episode, it doesn’t detract from what has been a consistently solid character. I think the moment when Stahlman starts gets some of the green slime and smothers it over his mouth is the sort of thing that wouldn’t be out of place in a hammer film. It was good how Greg and Petra ended up together as it was obvious in both universes that this was going to happen. I thought that Greg had grown on me and this might be down to the other Greg but I didn’t find him annoying. Petra has also been a good character and played brilliantly by Sheila Dunn. It’s not been the greatest character that’s ever been created but Dunn did better than some actresses would have done with the role.

The final scene is a strange one in the grand scheme of things. It’s Liz’s final scene (though at the time they wouldn’t have known it). The way in which the Doctor rather angrily speaks to the Brigadier and then appears after finding himself back in the rubbish top is quite amusing because of the sheepish way that the Doctor asks for the Brigadier for help.

As an episode I thought that it ended well. It didn’t rush itself and took its time and as a result it’s a satisfying ending and I liked it. After seven episodes it was good that I didn’t find myself disappointed with how things went. All the performances and the writing have helped this be the perfect final story to the perfect season. Before starting this season, I probably would have said that this was my favourite and I still love this story but I think that the Silurians story is the marginally stronger story. I still stand by the fact that this is my favourite season because there isn’t a dud story. I think that the season would have benefited from having shorter episodes as three seven episode stories is just too much but apart from that I think that Jon Pertwee’s first season as the Doctor is a success. It’s a shame that Caroline John didn’t get the goodbye scene that she deserved as she has been a great joy of this season. If you would bear with me whilst I go into stats mode, Caroline John has appeared in 25 episodes and has the third shortest involvement in Doctor Who ahead of Jackie Lane (19) and Adrienne Hill (8).

Inferno - Episode 6

As we approach the end of this story it seems that after a rather leisurely pace in the previous episode, we get back to a brisker pace as the Doctor tries to get back to his own universe. I like how no one is really stopping the Doctor from doing what he wants to do. They have all pretty much accepted that they are doomed and are happy to at least help the Doctor even if they don’t fully understand him.

The effect that is used when Petra, Liz and the Brigade Leader go outside is quite good and does a great job of convincing us that the world is start to go out of control. It gets even better towards the end of the episode as the Doctor is trying to take off and you can’t accuse them of trying to fob us off with unconvincing still images.

Whereas in the previous two episodes, it was at least half of the episode before we get to go back to the original universe but in this episode its five minutes. I love the scene between the Brigadier and Benton when Benton comes without Stahlman. By the end the way that the Brigadier was raising his voice seemed to be very similar to how the Brigade Leader has been acting in the previous episodes. After the slightly claustrophobic feel that the alternate universe was starting to do to me, it was good that we had a decent amount of time in the original universe.

I didn’t notice until this episode but Nicholas Courtney is truly fantastic as the Brigade Leader. He’s using his power (or what he thinks is power) to cover up the fact that he is freaking out just as much as everyone else. This comes to a head when Sutton stands up to him and when the Brigade Leader’s gun doesn’t go off there is a nice fight scene. Caroline John continues to show what she can do when she’s allowed to. The other Liz has mellowed a bit since we first saw her but she’s still quite a strong character and John should be praised for the way that she manages to distinguish the two versions of the same character without going over the top

The highlight of this episode came towards the end when the Brigade Leader is about to force the Doctor to take all of them with him back to his world. This when molten lava is heading towards the hut and it’s a great way to end the episode. I found this episode to be more entertaining than the previous one. It feels like they were actually building towards something which bearing in mind that it’s the last episode next is the least that we should be getting. Tomorrow’s going to be a weird episode for a few reasons which is something that I will go into tomorrow.

Inferno - Episode 5

The fifth episode continues with the world going to hell in a handcart. It’s still fun to see evil Liz and evil Brigade Leader and you can tell that they are really enjoy their current roles. I like how it’s only the Brigadier that remains to stand firm about what he thinks. Liz is a bit more willing to listen to whilst Petra and Greg are also on the side of the Doctor when they aren’t having their tender moments. After a while the plot moves a bit when the Doctor is trying to convince the others to help him get back to his universe. This would be a rather

The werewolf type faces are quite effective and the sight of several of them helps create the idea that they are an effective villain and even though they don’t appear until the latter stages of the episode, they do work well and add another problem to the list that the Doctor and others currently have. The sequence where Benton gets turned into one of those creatures. All but the final shot works really well and its only the final shot before it loses some of its credibility with John Levene pulling a weird face.

Performances wise, its hard to fault anyone. I think that Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney are enjoying themselves and Jon Pertwee continues to work really hard considering he’s involved in pretty much every important or mildly important scene. Even John Levene’s performance cant be faulted even though the transformation face didn’t work as well as it could have done.

The only time we get to see the normal world is when we get back to find that Sir Keith Gold has won in having the drilling stopped (all but temporarily). It ends with the car going off the road and this is suppose to imply that this is what happened to Sir Keith in the alternate universe. That’s pretty much it and it’s weird to think that this is the second episode running where we get very little from the original universe.

I don’t know why but I just didn’t find this episode as good as the previous two. Not sure whether it has something to do with the fact that nothing really happens in this 22 minute episode and so as a result it feels a bit more like padding. With just two more episodes left to enjoy of this season I think its fair to say that I am still enjoying this story and feel that things are going to get even more tense as things really start to go to hell.

Inferno - Episode 4

The fourth episode of this story starts off in the other world. After spending two episodes being stuck in the normal universe, it was good that we get a nice amount of time in the other world. The alternate Liz seems to be the first one to think that the Doctor isn’t a saboteur. The beauty of being in this universe is that we know what could happen in the original world before they do. By the end of the episode, the drill-head has reached penetration

It’s nearly 15 minutes before we return to the normal world. Even though it only goes on for three minutes its long enough for us to know what’s happening and that is Sir Keith Gold is about to go to London to meet the minister in charge to have the facility shut down.  That’s all we get from the nice Brigadier and Liz, we spend so much time away from them that when they do appear it feels strange and also it makes them look slightly less interesting. I cant believe I’ve written that but its true. When I watch evil Liz and evil Brigade Leader, I find myself being slightly less interested when we see a blonde Liz and an non-eye patch Brigadier.

Jon Pertwee is really good in this episode as he in pretty much every shot of the episode. The story would have fallen apart without him really but one of the reasons why this story works is because of how hard Jon Pertwee is working. It’s hard to believe that we are almost at the end of the first season of Jon Pertwee as the Doctor and he has adapted to the role quicker than Patrick Troughton did. Caroline John is brilliant in this episode, she’s better when she’s evil Liz and as a result she gets loads to do and is the best she’s been so far this season.

Something else that works well in this alternative universe is the involvement of Greg and Perta. Whilst Stahlman looks sleeker than normal Stahlman, its Petra and Greg that work better because they seem to be the voice of reason. Sutton is more annoyed about being used as a civil servant and when warned that accidents could happen she seems to let slip that she fancies him and hides it by saying it would be a waste. I feel like I am warming to the pair of them. I think that Sheila Dunn is not given enough praise during this story and she does well with what is a rather average character, I even found Greg to be quite good and Derek Newark does an equally good job in putting some life into the story.

As this story moves along, I find myself thinking that seven episodes is quite a good length for this story. They resisted the temptation of flitting between the two universes and instead give us a nice portion of time in the other universe. I think that this is another cracking episode that is paced well, well directed and there are some fine performances from everyone.

Inferno - Episode 3

This is the episode where things really get interesting. This is the episode where the Doctor goes to the parallel universe and encounters a fascist Brigadier and Liz Shaw. There is a brief moment where the nice Brigadier and Liz try to convince Stahlman to turn the power back on. This bit lasts for a few moments before we get to go into the parallel universe. The way that this is achieved looks like a glitter ball with a unusual sound effect.  Apart from this brief moment this episode is purely about what goes on elsewhere.

I like how there’s a nice few moments when the Doctor wakes up before things start to go wrong when he is shot at. There is a wonderful action sequence with the Doctor and several soldiers which reminds me of how different the Pertwee era is to what we’ve had before. It does feel during this episode that the story has finally found its legs and started running. I don’t mind admitting that I made a mistake in yesterday’s review when I said that it had the recording breaking stunt fall. It was actually this episode.

Liz Shaw’s entrance in this parallel version is great. She’s got a wonderful black wig and uniform which means that she’s more impressive than the nice Liz that we’ve had since the first episode of the season. Nicholas Courtney’s first appearance is also memorable. The shot of him spinning around and all that we see is the eye patch. His job title changes in this episode where he is now Brigade Leader. Even Benton is quite fun in this episode though he does share one trait with the original Benton and that is he’s a bit gullible and falls for a simple trick by the Doctor.

We learn that the drilling is it a far more advance stage than in the first universe. This will be repeated several times during the course of the story and its handy to know but at this stage of the story its not really that important. Nicholas Courtney gets to deliver one of the best lines in Doctor Who when after the Doctor tells the Brigade Leader that he doesn’t exist in this universe, the Brigade Leader replies with “Then you wont feel the bullets when we shoot you.”.

This is by far the best episode of the season. From the very beginning of the episode I found myself enjoying everything about it. I can now start to see why I enjoy this story so much. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves playing different versions of their characters. I think that this story is Nicholas Courtney’s as his Brigade Leader is so far removed from the Brigadier that its hard to imagine that its suppose to be the same character. The story really has begun and I am looking forward to the next four episodes.

Inferno - Episode 2

The second episode of the story continues the pace of the first one and there is a bit of action from the very beginning. The stuff with Slocum was quite good and the idea that no one should touch him otherwise they would be killed. This episode features what was at the time the biggest stunt fall. One of the things that I liked about this episode is the stuff that happened outside because it felt like it gave some depth to the setting. Whereas in ‘The Silurians’ we just got some corridors and a few rooms, we never got location filming to the extent that we get in this story.

During the course of this episode Stahlman gets more and more agitated and becomes infected during this episode. In the case of Slocum, he gets infected by actually touching the slime whereas Stahlman gets infected by touching the container that is heat resistant. This is either a plot error or this means that the slime is more potent than initially suggested. After Slocum had bitten the dust it was time to get more people infected and this happened and it led to some good moments but the people that were infected weren’t really created with connecting with the audience. It felt like to me just a way of passing the time.

I love the line that Jon Pertwee says about wondering whether the slime would be screaming. It’s a rather philosophical idea. Despite the story not really moving on much during the course of these two episodes, I think that Jon Pertwee does brilliantly with what he’s given and that’s having a verbal battle with Stahlman. Unlike the previous episode, it doesn’t take fifteen minutes for Liz to make an appearance. She is quite good in this episode. Which makes a change from what we have seen of her during the course of the season.

Petra and Greg Sutton were two characters that were introduced in the previous episode but I neglected to mention them. Petra is a more interesting character out of the two because of her position. Greg doesn’t really have much point being there really and even as the story progresses, his purpose still confuses me but more of that later. For me the best character in the entire episode is Stahlman. Olaf Pooley was a brilliant piece of casting and is just as good as John Abineri was in the previous story. In fact I would go so far as to say that he is slightly better. At least the character had some development in this episode.

It’s a better episode than the first but it does feel like there is a fair amount of padding before the main part of the story gets going. I think that its still a good story and I know that the best is still to come but there are things that are worth enjoying at the moment.

Inferno - Episode 1

Inferno is my favourite story of the Seventh series. It’s hard to believe that this is the fourth story of the season and yet it’s the last. This is the shortest season of Doctor Who so far and its another story where it starts off with a different way of introducing the title. The title card is imposed over the image of a volcanic eruption. This story takes place in a drilling facility. Not quite sure what UNIT is there really but I suppose that as UNIT are part of the season, they need to be part of the story even if their involvement isn’t really necessary. I mean a murder isn’t something that would warrant UNIT’s involvement. A police unit yes but not UNIT.

This is where we are introduced to Sir Keith Gold played by Christopher Benjamin. It’s hard to look at him and not think of Henry Gordon Jago. It’s clear very quickly that Sir Keith is designed to be one of the good guys and one that the viewers that can be trusted and one that will be an aid to the Doctor and Liz not a hindrance. Another supporting character that we meet is Professor Stahlman. Professor Stahlman is someone who is unlikeable from the very moment that we meet him. He’s the leader of the project and feels like there is a conspiracy to stop him from project from reaching its goal. This is going to be a good source of tension in the story. Slocum is the first victim and it happens in record time. We’re just over the four minute mark before he gets infected. It’s quite a quick transformation as by the end of the episode, he’s turned into what looks like a werewolf. There are moments where he comes across as quite aggressive and would be more than a match for the Doctor.

In my regular Liz rant, its fifteen minutes before Caroline John gets to appear on screen. It’s perhaps no surprise that Caroline John decided to leave the show at the end of the story because she came to the conclusion that she wasn’t going to be used very well and its clear that behind the scenes they must have wanted someone who was more of a screamer than Liz. When Liz does appear she is quite good and it just makes me more annoyed when

The Doctor is trying to get off earth even when he just has the console and during this episode he goes for a test run and during this it doesn’t go very well. It’s the first time really since the opening story that the Doctor has tried to be so open about leaving earth. It’s almost like there was a feeling that this might be the final season and it could have been the case that at the end of the story the Doctor would go off into the cosmos but obviously that didn’t happen. What does happen is that there is an awful lot of talk about drilling and a tiny bit about a nice guy that commits a murder. That’s it really as far as a narrative goes. I thought that this was a very good opening episode. It introduces all the various elements rather well and I think that the seven episode running time is just the right length. As we embark on the final story of the season, I find myself feeling a little bit sad knowing that we will soon be out of my favourite era of the show.