After not been terribly impressed with the opening episode of the Daleks’ overdue return, I was hoping that the story might make up for the mistakes of that episode. The episode starts with the Doctor being taken for Sir Reginald Styles. It’s good that we learn a bit more about what the guerrillas are doing and why they want to do it. I don’t think that they are particularly good really and they seem rather hapless. You would have thought that they would know what Styles looks like and make such an amateur error. Ok they might not have endless resources at their disposal but I just think that they would make a better attempt to try and discover what his appearance is. Speaking of Styles he only gets a brief mention in this episode when the Brigadier mentions that he has got the Chinese to attend the peace conference.
The Doctor and Jo have mixed fortunes in this episode. Jo gets transported to the 22nd Century by accident and as if that wasn’t bad enough she gets transported in front of the controller. I like how the moment that Jo and the controller start talking, he is doing his very best to come across as her best friend trying to get information out of her. I now like the character and think that he’s a lot smarter than he was made to look in the previous episode. Sadly Jo doesn’t come across as particularly smart as she gives up lots of information about where she came from with next to no coercion. The Doctor is less active in this episode due to the fact that he spends most of it with a gun pointed at him.
At one point there are about five or six ograns which is a lot more than the number of Daleks we see in episode four. The Ograns are simple yet effective as they are quite imposing yet aren’t particularly smart.
Something I didn’t mention before was the location filming. Paul Bernard has done a good job in making the location footage look part of the story not just something to break up the studio filming. Another thing that Bernard did well was the shots where the controller is talking to the Daleks via the CSO screens. Basically he done well in making the image of the Daleks appear over the controller shot and for the controller to appear in exactly the right place. Those who are smarter than me might not be impressed with that but I think that it must be tougher than it seems to make that work.
The cliffhanger was a cracking one. A dalek appearing in a dimly lit tunnel is a fantastic image and it’s a great moment in the story. Sadly the voice of the Dalek diminishes any threat of menace that we had heard earlier but I think that its started to get going which is a relief after the rather underwhelming opening episode. My optimism has been elevated a lot more from this 25 minutes and I have high hopes of the next two episodes.
The Doctor and Jo have mixed fortunes in this episode. Jo gets transported to the 22nd Century by accident and as if that wasn’t bad enough she gets transported in front of the controller. I like how the moment that Jo and the controller start talking, he is doing his very best to come across as her best friend trying to get information out of her. I now like the character and think that he’s a lot smarter than he was made to look in the previous episode. Sadly Jo doesn’t come across as particularly smart as she gives up lots of information about where she came from with next to no coercion. The Doctor is less active in this episode due to the fact that he spends most of it with a gun pointed at him.
At one point there are about five or six ograns which is a lot more than the number of Daleks we see in episode four. The Ograns are simple yet effective as they are quite imposing yet aren’t particularly smart.
Something I didn’t mention before was the location filming. Paul Bernard has done a good job in making the location footage look part of the story not just something to break up the studio filming. Another thing that Bernard did well was the shots where the controller is talking to the Daleks via the CSO screens. Basically he done well in making the image of the Daleks appear over the controller shot and for the controller to appear in exactly the right place. Those who are smarter than me might not be impressed with that but I think that it must be tougher than it seems to make that work.
The cliffhanger was a cracking one. A dalek appearing in a dimly lit tunnel is a fantastic image and it’s a great moment in the story. Sadly the voice of the Dalek diminishes any threat of menace that we had heard earlier but I think that its started to get going which is a relief after the rather underwhelming opening episode. My optimism has been elevated a lot more from this 25 minutes and I have high hopes of the next two episodes.
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