The Claws of Axos - Episode 3

I thought that the cliffhanger was rather disappointing. When there are less cliffhanger in a story it’s not a good thing to have any that are below par and this was well below par. When the episode starts we do get a fun couple of minutes when chaos seems to run loose. The axon thing that dragging itself on the floor looks rather poor it has to be said. But the tentacle version is a much better creation and according to the information text, it was a rather expensive costume. It makes a change that some money has been spent on the costumes.

The effect of turning those tentacle things into Axons around the Doctor and Jo is rather well done. It’s another in a long line of good effects done in this story and whilst I might be sceptical about CSO, I think that sometimes the effects done in 1970’s Doctor Who stories were very good and people might be sniffy about them in 2014, but when you stop to think about what they must have had to work with in 1971 then you can appreciate it a bit more. Another good effect is making Jo look older. It’s very well done and works very well on screen.

The way that the Master first appears in this episode is by tricking Benton into leaving the TARDIS unattended. When Delgado turns to face the camera its clear that he has a poor mask on. Trying to believe that Benton could have been fooled by such a flimsy disguise doesn’t do much to show Benton in a good light and considering it comes after Benton got ‘dizzy’ in the previous story, I wish they wouldn’t do this to him.

This episode marks the first time since the final episode of ‘The War Games’ that we see inside the TARDIS and it’s the first time that we see it in colour and what a mess the Master finds it in. It shows how black and white television can have a benefit because the colours that are used for the console room don’t look particularly nice and I know that this will change in future stories but people in 1971 must have been disappointed when they saw the console room finally in colour.

The Master wants the Doctor’s TARDIS so he can leave before the Axons can start their plan. As the Master has lost his TARDIS to the axons and they seem reluctant to let him have it back, it’s a plausible line of thinking but obviously with the Master it’s debatable as to whether he’s got something else planned or whether he is on this occasion being honest.

The cliffhanger is much better than the previous one. The possibility of the Doctor and Jo being killed at the hands of the Master with the Brigadier standing right next to him is one that most people wouldn’t have seen coming and even though I know how it would go (and even 1971 audience would have known that it wasn’t going to be the end of them), it still makes for a good ending. The one thing about this story is that it doesn’t feel like we’re building up to anything. It feels like it’s a six part story and not four.