Todays episode is the final episode of the 1970’s. It’s
quite impressive how much the show has grown in this decade and the show starts
a gradual decline that would carry on for the rest of the classic era. It’s
weird to think that there is just nine years of the classic era left and I am
less than a month from entering the Peter Davison era. My main gripe with this episode is the humour
which is again a major problem with this story because it starts pretty much
from the beginning. There is a moment later on where the Doctor is messing
around with the console and there is a flash and explosion along with some
comedy noises and I think that just totally ruin the story and I am really
getting fed up with this and I am only two episodes in. Thankfully the story
does actually get given some time away from the comedy show that is the Doctor
and K9 show. The reason why the Nimon takes them is so that they give the
humans some technology/power that they crave. This is the generic explanation
but considering I am desperate for something good to happen in this story that I
am just happy that something works.
The rearranging of the sets is a really inventive way of
getting around the fact there wasn’t enough money for extra sets. It something
that impressed which me does sound like damning with faint praise but it’s a genuine
positive in this story. Another positive in this story is that for some reason
I found Soldeed to be very good. I think that Graham Crowden seems to have
pulled back the silliness and the character is bordering on slightly maniacal. It
was weird seeing Tom Baker and Graham Crowden on screen together considering
that Crowden could have been the fourth Doctor. The co-pilot meets a horny
ending (that just sounds wrong doesn’t it!) when he is killed by the Nimon. It’s
odd though that this is the cliffhanger, well technically Romanas reaction is
the cliffhanger but this isn’t the best way of trying to entice people back for
the first episode of 1980.
The character of Seth seems to be the one that the others
are pinning their hopes on and if I were them then I would think that we were
screwed because he shows absolutely nothing to me that suggests he could be the
hero. Even in a story such as ‘The Mutants’ which isn’t one of my favourites,
there was at least someone that was perceived to be the one that would bring
balance to the force….sorry zoned out for a second but the point is that he
worked in that story. With all due respect to Simon Gipps-Kent, I just don’t think
that he carries much weight in narrative terms.
Its weird that they gave Romana her own sonic screwdriver in
the previous episode and then proceed to part her from it in this episode. This
seems like a totally silly thing to do or you could see it as a silly thing to
have done in the previous episode to have given it to her in the first place.
The first episode of the decade was the first episode of ‘Spearhead
from Space’ which I rated at 7.8 out of 10 and todays episode got 6.80. This is
only the second time that a Tom Baker story has got below 7 (yesterdays episode
was the first). It’s the first time that two episodes in a row have got below 7
since episodes five and six of ‘The Space Pirates’ way back in season six or
January 12th and 13th of this year in my marathon. I
think that this shows that the story hasn’t changed and could possibly get even
worst with the remaining episodes. I will end on a surprising note, episode one
got 6.0 million viewers whereas this episode got 8.8 million. That means that
2.8 million people thought that they would put their common sense next to one
side and watch this episode. What is even more scary is that the next episode
got 9.8 million episodes and the final episode would get 10.4 million. I really
cant see what people were tuning in for. Presumably to see how silly the Nimon
costumes were.
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