The Invasion of Time - Episode 6

This is the last episode to feature Louise Jameson as Leela. Not that you would know that due to the fact there has been no real build up. This is the 40^th episode to feature Louise Jameson and this ties her with Debroah Watling in terms of episodes. The episode starts with the Doctor and everyone on the TARDIS about to be thrown into a black star. The hand held camera adds to the great dramatic feel to the start of the episode.

Stor takes off his helmet and everytime I see it, I cant help think that it looks like Bernard Cribbins. I cant help it. No matter how many times I see this story I think that this is Bernard Cribbins is making his first appearance in official Doctor Who. This is the episode where the TARDIS is explored in a way that has never been seen before or perhaps since. I wonder if the rooms that we see in this episode get deleted in ‘Castrovalva’. Would it really be missed if they were?

There is a moment when Kelnar and a Sontaran are looking at art and I cant help think about the opening scene in the Big Finish play ‘Dust Breeding’ where the Seventh Doctor and Ace are talking about art and I cant help think of the set used for this story. If you haven’t heard that story then you should because it’s a great story.

The new Doctor is tagged with being cold and heartless and perhaps the moment when Tom Baker’s Doctor kills Stor is an early example of this. I think that the shot of the Doctor holding the gun at Stor in a particular way is his ‘John Wayne moment’ is a very cool shot and is one of my favourite shots in the entire piece. I think that all the shot inside the TARDIS are quite nice however they are completely forgotten about as future tours into the bowels of the TARDIS are completely different so its hard to really take this episode seriously as far as continuity is concerned.

Leela’s final scene is a bit rushed and feels like it. Suddenly she has developed feelings for Andred and the Doctor is rather too quick to let her go. Even though Leela looks sad when the Doctor leaves, it seems like the Doctor couldn’t wait to get rid of her. It’s a shame that more effort wasn’t made to write a better departure for her. It surely would have made more sense to have her fall in love with one of the rebels. However as the story and episode stands it’s a fine end to the season. It’s not a perfect story by any means but I think that I would be lying if I said I didn’t largely enjoy it. Oh well, now we are onto the Key to Time series which is going to be a rollercoaster of quality.

The Invasion of Time - Episode 5

So the Sontarans have finally appeared. After being stuck with the horrible tin foil (or nice Vardens if you had been watching the CGI version), it was nice to know that they wont be making an appearance. They cant be that good an alien race if they allow the Sontarans to use them in this way. The appearance of the Sontrans on the stairs continues to impress me and I think that they manage to give this final season story a bit more gravitas than it would have had. Whether it is the best of the six part finales remains to be seen but considering that this is the only one to feature a returning monster then its certainly up their.

Despite this being their third story and the race suppose to be clones, the Sontarans we get in this story don’t look like anything that we had seen before. Just by looking at their hands shows that the budget clearly didn’t stretch to proper prostecthics. There is one shot where Derek Deadman (who plays Stor) is talking to Kelner and the mask he has to wear looks a bit iffy. I think that these issues will surface in a more noticeable way in the final episode but I think that the mask is going to be one of the problems I have with this story. Certainly if memory serves me right.

It didn’t take Kelner long to become best buddies with the Sontarans. Luckily the Sontarans don’t want to know and don’t see much value in him and refuse to listen when Kelner tries to tell them that the President is the Doctor. I still think that Kelner is the best of the supporting characters but I think that its down to Milton Johns’ portrayal of this role. John Arnatt is good as Borusa but becomes a bit more of a sidekick to the Doctor which given that Brousa is suppose to be the President’s number two isn’t perhaps surprising.

The Doctor becomes the first President to hold the great key. I think that calling it the Great Key is perhaps being a bit too kind because it looks just like a normal key. Speaking of the great key, it does lead to one of the nicest moments in the episode when the Doctor hands the great key to Leela and tells Borusa that he trusts Leela and Leela smiles. After not getting the impression that they were on the same page, it was nice to see in Louise Jameson’s final episode the two seemed to be working well.

As the penultimate episode this story feels like its still in transition even though more happens in it than in the previous episode. I think that it’s a very good episode and ends in a really bonkers way. The Doctor and Rodan (presumably the others as well) are in a tiny bit of trouble and the screen goes white with the Doctor looking at the screen. I think that with just one episode remaining this story has managed to deal with the lack of money a lot better than ‘Underworld’.

The Invasion of Time - Episode 4

Get your violins out but I’m currently a bit under the weather and there was a part of me that thought that I might not be able to do it but I’m gonna fight through it and just do the best I can. The episode starts with Andred pointing a gun at the Doctor that didn’t last long as K9 was on hand to save the day. Andred is finally let in on what the Doctor is planning. He realises that banishing Leela was a wise thing to do. Castellan Kelner is easily one of the best characters in the serial. He’s just loving walking around like he’s the boss.

I am watching this story without the CGI effects on and its sad that the tin foil Vardans don’t quite work. There is one bit where one of them is sitting in a chair and that looks quite good but that’s about as good as it got. The Vardans are quite stupid really because they don’t question where he is and why they cant read his mind. It’s almost like they are trying to lure the Doctor into a false sense of security. That’s the only reason I can think of for this level of incompetence.

Leela’s part in the story is starting to get interesting. She has managed to state a fairly impressive coup by overthrowing the guards. She is the one that drives the rebels and is the one that convinces them they can succeed. I think that without her the rebels would have carried on living outside in the rather bland wilderness. It’s not the wonderful orange sky that we get promised in future stories.

I like how everyone thinks that the troubles are over and then the cliffhanger changes all that as the Sontarans appear for the first time in 86 episodes. I have to say that their appearance was done quite well by Gerald Blake. This has been the transitional episode where the plot needs to change direction and stay interesting. The episode picked up in the final 10 minutes but before then it didn’t seem like it was really going anywhere but despite that I am still enjoying this serial and think that its not as bad as I previously thought.

The Invasion of Time - Episode 3

I was just browsing the Den of Geek site and there is an article about Rainbow (which is a show that I love) and I discovered that John Leeson was the voice of Bungle for its first series which aired on ITV from October to December 1972. That has nothing to do with this story but I just thought that it was an interesting fact to start things off. The cliffhanger is made great simply by the Doctor’s laugh when the Varden’s first appear. This might also be because the CGI effects makes it look really good. The effects that were used in the original transmission are somewhat disappointing.

I like how Leela accepts her exile because she still thinks that the Doctor must have something planned and she is still willing to trust the Doctor even after all that has happened in this story so far. Leela becomes a lot more active in this episode as she goes outside and interacts with other people who seem to be unlike the timelords in the citadel. When I say unlike I mean that there is less pomp and circumstance.

When Rodan is told that she will have to build her own shelter and hunt for her own food she is basically reduced to tears and this shows how pompous the Timelords are really. Leela seems to be in her element when she meets the exiles. To be honest, the exiles aren’t particularly pleasant and its easy to see why no one really ventures outside. Also it looks baron and horrible so that’s another reason. The Doctor finally reveals his plans to Borusa and this is the first time that there has been any sense of plot explanation. This is also the first time that the Doctor has really been himself. The scene between Tom Baker and John Arnatt are nice and humorous. I have thought that in recent years that Louise Jameson’s departure was rushed and made no sense but judging on this episode it seems to be far less rushed than I had previously thought. She seems to be at home once she’s outside and it’s the first time that she’s been truly happy since she boarded the TARDIS.

The cliffhanger doesn’t quite have the punch that the previous two had but its still a good ending. I get the feeling that the story is moving on and at the half way point I am still enjoying this adventure but feel that its largely down to the CGI effects. The performances are all good and the writing and direction are all perfectly fine. I think that out of the two stories set on Gallifrey, this one is the weaker of the two but it still has some good moments.

 

The Invasion of Time - Episode 2

The second episode starts with the rather impressive cliffhanger reprise. It still works a second time. Something that struck me about the previous episode was that Leela shouldn’t be on Gallifrey due to her being an alien. Sarah Jane had to leave the TARDIS for this reason prior to ‘The Deadly Assassin’. This is resolved fairly quickly in this episode and it leads to Leela being exiled to the wastelands.

The scene where the Doctor is pretending to talk to Borusa so that he can open the secret door is quite amusing and does feel like the dark clouds have been lifted from the doctor for a moment. Such as hopscotching down a corridor and the chat he has with K9.  That didn’t last for long as by the midway point he’s back to shouting Borusa in a very stern way. I quite like John Arnatt because he gives a very grandee performance and is believable as Chancellor. Milton Johns returns after last appearing in ‘The Android Invasion’, here there is something rather slimy about him but it works and that is why he is one of the best supporting characters in the episode.

Tom Baker’s strong performance continues. It’s reassuring that he goes back to his old self and there is one look he gives K9 in the TARDIS which shows his good self. The thing about the Doctor is that its very difficult to tell whether he’s pretending to be devious or whether its just the new Doctor. The mystery is quite fun and considering the number of times that I have watched this story its still difficult to work it out. Louise Jameson’s performance is hampered somewhat by not really being given anything substantial to do. All that she does that is noteworthy is where she is introduced to Rodan (played by Hilary Ryan). Rodan seems very much like the rest of the Timelords as she shows very little interest in whats going on.

This episode has another cracking cliffhanger. This is where the people that the Doctor has been working for finally arrive after nearly an hour of storytelling. Thanks to the CGI effects being switched on for this DVD it means that the ending is far better than it would have been in 1978. This story is moving along at a decent rate but it does feel like it needs to start delivering soon. Two episodes in and there is no indication that Leela might be leaving. The episode works well and I am just waiting for it to all go badly wrong.

The Invasion of Time - Episode 1

After being largely surprised with how much I have enjoyed the last few stories, I am looking forward to the six part finale that makes up Louise Jameson’s final appearance in the show. This story also marks the first appearance of the Sontarans since ‘The Sontaran Experiment’, nearly three years ago. This is their third encounter with the Doctor but this opening episode sees the show start off in a way that most people wouldn’t have expected. The episode starts off with the Doctor acting quite oddly. There is a nice scene between Leela and K9 and by the end of it, Leela looks like she is being left out in the cold. When the Doctor lands on Gallifrey he claims the presidency which is very unlike what I saw in the previous Gallifrey story. Tom Baker is on absolute fantastic form in this episode, giving the sort of performance that I haven’t seen for quite sometime.

This DVD is one that features new CGI to replace some of the rather poor special effects. The effects don’t really stand out in this episode but if memory serves me correctly then it wont take long for the effects to stand out. This story is famous really for delving into the TARDIS like the show had never done before, this will happen later on it the story. In this episode Leela is having a swim.

Once the action moves to Gallifrey, Leela’s role in the story becomes clear and it is to spend most of her scenes shouting at Andred. I cant quite make my mind up about Andred because he doesn’t really stand out much as a guard. He doenst have much of a presence about him and it does seem that if he was a guard then the standards would have slipped quite a bit.

This story takes place on Gallifrey but its slightly different to the Gallifrey that we saw in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ just two years earlier. Yet whilst there is a similarity to the old set, the new set isn’t as dark and it seems like they left the lights on during this story. The weird random chairs that seem to be dotted around the place are slightly distracting. They don’t really seem to fit the tradition and sophicastion of the Timelords yet just seem to be a ‘modern’ thing to add.

The cliffhanger was really good as the Doctor’s coronation starts off all nice but then it goes a bit wrong when the ‘crown’ is put on his head and he falls to the floor in pain. This ends what has been an intriguing opening episode and the Sontaran’s return is held off for another episodes, its not been 83 episodes since they last appeared. Having remembered what they look like, I cant say that their return is 100% welcomed.

The Abominable Snowmen - Episode 6

Right, just one more episode to listen to before we get about two and a half weeks work of DVDs instead of audio. The problems that I have had with the story haven’t really been resolved as I would have expected this final episode to have picked up the pace but it still feels like its killing time. I must confess that there is more going on in this episode but as I’ve lost any goodwill for this story then I’m afraid that I just don’t see anything positive to write about this. Not even Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines can help this from being a rather substandard story.

It’s quite good how at the very end Travers ends up seeing the Abominable Snowman that he’s been searching for. Of course it wont be the last time that we will see him and it wont be long before he returns because for some reason it was decided that this story worked so well that they deserved a sequel. Well maybe I have been harsh over the last six episodes but I have to say that without something to look at (apart from telesnaps) its difficult to get excited or even interested in a story.  Its not the worst story ever because as I may not have made clear there are things in this story that are worth getting excited about and its most in the first two episodes. At least now we get to some of the newly released stories on DVD. Oh I love that – DVD.

The Abominable Snowmen - Episode 5

The penultimate episode and my patience is starting to wear a bit thin. Knowing that I have the Ice Warriors, Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear to enjoy just makes this rather lacklustre story all the more harder to endure. I almost cant be bothered to write anything because I just have lost any ability to write anything substancial about this episode.

The stuff with Victoria was somewhat interesting but  that’s the only highlight. I thought that the regulars were all quite good but they were let down badly by the supporting cast as they all seemed to just whisper and talk like they are trying to put us to sleep. As I have previously mentioned I think that this story loses something my not being on TV.

It’s another episode where I continued to be bemused as to why people hold this story in such high regard. Maybe if you listen to it in on sitting then it might work but doing it one day at a time is not the best way to listen to this adventure.  I couldn’t quite tell you whats been going on in this episode apart from Victoria being possessed and then going back to her normal self but at least I only have one more episode to enduer.

The Abominable Snowmen - Episode 4

The episode starts off quite well and I found my interest going up a bit as the Doctor and Jamie get some more time ‘on screen’.  Sadly that was as good as the episode would get as this story staggers towards its end which is worryingly another two episodes away. Even with the wonderful Frazer Hines’ narration popping up every couple of moments, I find myself feeling rather tired when listening to this story. It’s all so lifeless and that’s a problem with it’s a six part adventure.

Had it not been for Frazer Hines and Patrick Troughton then I would have given up after about five or six minutes and the only thing that seemed to go in the plus box is the fact that the great intelligence seems to be more of an important factor in the story. It’s a shame that we can’t see what’s going on. I cant quite figure out whether it’s the fact that theres padding or whether the stuff that’s happening is just not very exciting. It feels more like the latter but it’s a fine line to be honest. My ability to write a lovely long review is always poor during the audio episodes but its even worse here as I cant drum up enough excitement about this episode.

The cliffhanger is rather poor. It’s rather indicative of the entire story as despite being four episodes in I still think that I would be enjoying this story more if I could see the action and my will to live is somewhat diminishing as the episode progressed. This story is nose-diving into boredom and the only thing that prevents this from being another Web Planet is that the Yeti and the sight of them wandering over the hills is something that is one of the most iconic in the shows history. Not too long until The Web of Fear and I cant wait to see that. Well only two episodes left to get through.

The Abominable Snowmen: Episode 3

Nooooooo! After the cliffhanger from episode two we now have to go back to the audios and sadly I feel that any goodwill that was created from the previous episode may start to fade and despite the progress that was made in terms of plot it feels like the story is moving slowly again. The start was quite good with them trying to find out where the sphere had disappeared to. After that I lost track of what was going on and that’s the fault of the script.

There isn’t much that I can really say about this episode so there wont be much to read for todays episode. There aren’t many good things that I can say about episode three but there are some things that save it from being one of the worst episodes that I’ve watched. First is a strange one, when we get the location footage again and the wind blowing it reminds me of the great location shots from the previous episode. A time when the story seemed like it had some hope. Another positive that I can find from this episode is Deborah Watling. She points something out in the first half of the episode that you would have expected to have come from Jamie or the Doctor. She continues this impressive change in character and I think that if I had a ‘Regular of the Episode’ award then it would definitely go to Deborah Watling. It’s one of the rare instances where Jamie and the Doctor are rather ordinary. I can’t really find anything that they do which is memorable. That’s not because of Frazer Hines or Patrick Troughton but just that they are poorly served in this story.

Sadly I think that this was another episode where not a lot happens. It’s a shame really as I think that had this episode existed on DVD then there would be something to look at whilst the nothingness was happening. As it stands this remains one of those stories that has potential but is restricted due to the fact that its running time is longer than it should be.

The Abominable Snowmen - Episode 2

The second episode is the only one of the six to exist on DVD. So its back to the ‘Lost in Time’ DVD set and the first thing I notice is that the cliffhanger from episode one wasn’t the greatest.  I love how Victoria asks Jamie what weird looking things are when its clear that he wouldn’t have an idea what it is. The Doctor’s situation goes from bad to worse as he is used as bait to lure the Yeti to the monastery whilst Jamie and Victoria spend the early part of the episode running away from the Yeti. I am surprised at how few Yeti we have seen so far. It’s not until towards the end of the episode that we see more than one. It’s quite a good sight seeing several Yeti roaming over the hills. It does show what we are missing by this not being on DVD which makes it more infuriating.

The mysterious voice that seems to come out of thin air is one of the few eerie things to come out of the episode. It’s good that we don’t see where the voice is coming from though clearly due to a shot in one scene its clear that its not too far away. It’s good how Travers admits that the Doctor isn’t the one that they are looking for. It ends that initial stage of the story and speaking of Travers its funny to see him in the scenes with his daughter. When I watch them I don’t think that they are father and daughter but instead two completely different people who have never met before.

As this is the only episode to exist on DVD it’s the only chance that I will have to comment on the direction. I think that its rather well done. The best part was when Jamie and the monks were attacking the Yeti and the camera was shaking all over the place. A technique used 40 years before Steven Spielberg would make it famous. I don’t know whether it was due to people knocking into it or whether it was intended it. Either way it’s a nice moment even if its too brief.

Performance wise, this episode works quite well. The regulars all did well and I like the joke that the Doctor does when Jamie comes up with an idea. It seems like it was a Troughton/Hines co-production. The supporting cast were all quite good but for me it was Jack Watling that was at the top of the pile.

The final moment comes after they discover what the woolly figure that has been attacking them is and it turns out that they are a furrier version of the Cybermen (but can’t talk). The final shot is of the sphere/ball moving of it own volition. It’s a good way to end the episode and my impression of the story has changed somewhat. I know that the next four episodes are back to audio but it does feel like the action is starting to take shape even if it is doing so at a infuriatingly slow pace.

The Abominable Snowmen - Episode 1

The Abominable Snowmen is arguably the Troughton era’s most popular and successful creation outside of the Dalek and Cybermen stories. Recently five of the six episodes of The Web of Fear were found but sadly this one remains lost.  It’s quite noticeable for many reasons but firstly its that this story features Deborah Watling’s father Jack Watling who plays Professor Travers in this story. After the futuristic story featuring the Cybermen, its time to take Victoria to her first proper story in history. The episode starts quite good because we get screams and no clear sign as to what has happened. It’s quite surprising at how sort of afraid Jamie is portrayed because he unwilling to go out with Victoria and does what the Doctor tells him. This soon changes when Jamie decides that he’s going to take on the trouble that is in front of them. It doesn’t take long for them all to be separated and it also doesn’t take long for the Doctor to get into trouble.

Our first meeting of Professor Travers isn’t a particularly positive one as he is the one that is convinced that the Doctor has killed his friend and caused all the trouble. I know that this is all part and parcel of the early stages of a Doctor Who story but sometimes it’s a bit tiresome but with six episodes to fill there has to be some sort of padding and its not the worst padding device ever. In terms of performances from the regulars, I think they all do rather well though I am confused by the swapping of roles between Watling and Hines. It almost seems like the writers couldn’t quite make up their minds about these two after spending a lot of time working on what Patrick Troughton was doing and I must say that his side of the story was quite enjoyable (if predictable).

I must say that after the Tomb of the Cybermen this story was always going to feel a bit of a let down but so I didn’t have my expectations to high and I think that the issue with a six parter is going to rear its ugly head during the next five episodes. There’s going to be a lot of padding but I think (or hope) that once it gets going it will be better than I think it is. I haven’t listened to this story in a long time so something’s are a bit hazy when I try and remember this story so hopefully this story will spring a surprise on me.