REVIEWS
If you'd like to let other Who fans know what you think about a particular video, DVD, novel, audio, whatever, feel free to send your review to me! Your review might be edited for grammar, punctuation, etc. (if necessary) but not for content: your views are your own! Please assign a rating of 1 - 5 stars to the item you're reviewing. And remember: just telling us what happened in the story isn't a review. Telling us what you thought about it (whether you loved it or hated it and why) is what we're looking for!
DVDs:
The Beginning DVD Box Set:
"An Unearthly Child", "The Daleks", "The Edge of Destruction" Season 1, 1963-64
Submitted by Alan Siler
With all the material that is missing from the BBC Archives, it amazes me how much of the first two seasons of Doctor Who exists. Fans may bemoan the number of holes in the 'official collection', but to be perfectly honest, we are extremely lucky to have as much as we do. The catalog of complete titles could be far worse. Which makes any DVD release from this era of great value, and particularly sets like this one, which chronicles the first couple of months that the show was on the air, trying desperately to establish itself in the public awareness.
The first thing that one notices upon popping the disks into the ol' player is how beautifully the picture and sound quality of this collection of episodes has been restored. The Restoration Team, the folks behind the DVD production, always do a tremendous job of cleaning up old film reels and bad soundtracks and presenting them in near-pristine quality, which is one of the elements that makes these DVD releases so important.
About the stories themselves, we are here given the three cornerstones upon which the entire series was derived, with a strong ensemble cast that takes characters written 2-dimensionally on paper and brought to vivid life by actors of skill and heart. I've always thought that Barbara and Ian are two of the best characters ever written in DW. In fact, they've never really seemed like characters to me, but rather real people having been placed in real and unusual circumstances. This is credit not only to the excellent character writing in the early years of the show, but also the two actors who played them: Jacqueline Hill and William Russell. These 'characters' had depth, beliefs, skills, convictions, fears, doubts, joys...and you saw it in every performance. The writing, though extremely excellent, is still a bit uneven in these first few stories, as producers and writers don't really know how the characters will live yet. Much of scriptwriting is informed by how characters are broght to life (or otherwise) by their actors. For instance, Barbara, while intelligent, level-headed and strong, was still a bit of a screamer in these first three stories. That diminished with time, I'm sure due in no small part to later writers having Jackie Hill's interpretation of the character in mind. It is unfortunate that companion writing wasn't always this well done. The majority of the rest of the 60s were populated with whispier characterizations, and some of the companions weren't even bothered to get last names.
But the big revelation in watching these first three stories is in seeing the Doctor. Its almost like the writers weren't really sure what to do with him. Certainly they'd never been asked to write for a character quite like him before. And possibly they simply couldn't get a handle on the producer's vision for him. But in these first few stories, the Doctor is in turn stern, judgmental, aloof, critical, sarcastic, tender, apologetic, and even murderous. His morals are very clearly suspect, and his motivations are terribly selfish. We do, however, get our frist glimpse of the Doctor we would eventually come to know near the end of "The Daleks", as he studies the Thals starcharts and encourages them to stand up for their beliefs, and later in the final moments as he imparts the advice that he 'never gives'. And all throughout these initial tales, William Hartnell is nothing short of brilliant.
"Ghost Light", on the otherhand, pretty
much fails at every turn. Oh, it has some nice moments, and I
realize that its one of the popular McCoy's, but for me, its utter
crap. And what's most interesting is that it sounds so
good: its a period piece that deals with evolution; it references
Darwin, Lewis Carroll, the Bible, and even makes a supremely clever
Douglas Adams quote. Its dark, rich with imagery, and just the
right length.
However, its so dark and so cryptic and so clever that it leaves the audience behind. None of the characters are the least bit understandable, much less plausible. I found myself not caring one bit about Control's desire to become "a proper lady-like", or Reverend Matthews' attempts to confront Josiah (a truly wasted character there), or all that silliness about Redvers Fenn-Cooper. The characters include an educated Neanderthal, a couple of old snakeskins that come to life, a constable that's been in a chest of drawers for 2 years, and a pack of silly aliens. However, there are two truly effective moments in the whole piece. The first is when Redvers reveals that he's on a new expedition, sponsored by Josiah Smith, and it is to find and kill the rare Crowned Saxe-Coburg (aka Queen Victoria). The second is when Gwendoline and Mrs Pritchard are awakened from their trance and realize that they are mother and daughter. As it slowly dawns on Pritchard that her husband is gone because Gwendoline killed him, her face is one of anger and disgust but also a recognition that it wasn't Gwendoline's fault. Also, the "changing of the guards" is nice, with the day staff making certain to leave by 6:00, when the über-creepy night maids appear literally from the woodworks. Plus, we get some really nice peeks into Ace's background, which happened in every story in Season 26.
I think that for me where this story failed is that it takes a really fascinating concept and completely fails to make it work. It all simply comes across as silly, pointless, insulting crap. In fact, half-way through Part 3, I suddenly yelled "This is so stupid!" and almost turned it off. However, I drudged onward 'til the end.
Another nice thing is that Josiah is not an all-powerful supervillain. He doesn't have dreams of galactic conquest or universal supremecy. Hell, he doesn't even want to take over the world...his goals are simply to control the British Empire! What a refreshing attitude!
However, that brings us to Light. An all-powerful supervillain who holds the fate of the world in his hands. Uh, didn't we see that in "Curse of Fenric"? And what about the Destroyer in "Battlefield"? And the Gods of R-R-R-R-Ragnor-r-r-r-rok in "Greatest Show"? This is getting just a bit tiresome!
So that's my verdict: two well-made shows that are similar in tone and accomplishment, one that works well and one that has a huge amount of promise but fails to deliver.
Novels:
"Spiral Scratch" BBC Novel by Gary Russell
Submitted by James Barnes
I can't say enough about how unbelieveably awesome this novel was (I just finished it this morning).
The basic premise begins with the quantum mechanical theory that every possibility creates an alternate universe where that possibility in played out. The analogy is made of the multiverse being like a great spiral with it's concentric rings being parallel universes. The plot unfolds as an anomaly creates a rift across the spiral arms of the multiverse (the "scratch" of the title) creating "bleed-over" during certain events and places. This anomaly has been caused by a being (or group of beings depending on how ya look at it) that exist outside the spiral and sustain it/themselves upon it's energies.
Anyhow, we get to encounter tons of parallel 6th Doctors and Mels here as they try to repair/save the entire multiverse together, which is not only in and of itself cool, but we get to see the final end of the 6th Doctor and the amazing events that lead to his regeneration!
Some of the cool parallel-Earth characters include a scar-faced Doctor from an Earth where the Roman Empire conquered the world and stayed in power for good (This Doctor seems to have a relationship with the Emperor in the way that the 3rd Doctor had with U.N.I.T.), a Mel who is Half-Silurian! (On her Earth the two species coexisted peacefully), and even tiny cameos by Evelyn Smythe, Frobisher, and others!
I had a tear in my eye on the last page finally knowing what brought an end to the 6th Doctor's era...
Read this, it's phenomenal!
"The Festival of Death" BBC Novel by Jonathan Morris
Submitted by Craig Lambert
This is a fantastic read. This was the first Doctor Who novel I read, and after reading about a dozen others, this is still the best, far exceeding all the others so far.
The story is extremely well written, very true to the TV show style, dialogue and characters. The plot is very interesting and exciting. The action moves quickly and there are wonderful plot twists and subplots to follow. The dialogue and supporting characters are marvelously written. I enjoyed every minute reading it, and enjoyed it perhaps even more on the second reading.
Tom Baker’s Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana are written so well. The characters are so true to what the show revealed. In fact, Morris takes it one step further—he writes the characters so they shine as brilliantly as possible. Even K-9 is written with character in mind. There is one short scene told from K-9’s perspective when he is sent off to follow someone. When the story is told from K-9’s point of view, the writing itself changes to reflect how K-9 would see things and perceive things. In addition, the "supporting cast" is fantastic. The villains, allies, and those people in between who present stumbling blocks are all a joy to read. Each character is amusing, interesting, believable, and very entertaining. Morris pays tribute to one of his favorite authors, Douglas Adams, by writing the shipboard computer as being a depressed and suicidal personality. What makes Morris' computer even better than Marvin is that Morris shows how and why the shipboard computer got depressed and suicidal in the first place. So there is character development even with the AI.
Reading The Festival of Death is like watching one of the best Tom Baker stories because in so many ways it feels like a Tom Baker story and script. The scenery, characters, and plot are all very evocative of the seventies and early eighties. Yet Morris adds elements and "sets" and aliens and creatures that the Tom Baker stories never could have produced. It’s what I always wish a Tom Baker televised story could have been.
The dialogue is simply brilliant. Romana and The Doctor banter so well it puts Han Solo and Princess Liea to shame. Their one-liners, repartee, and correcting of each other’s knowledge is hilarious. Some of the best scenes are when Romana or the Doctor sees a "previous" version of himself or herself, a la Back to the Future. For example, 'The previous Doctor shambled across the hall, gazing appreciatively at his surroundings. The Doctor was disconcerted by how often this chap was ruffling his hair, and rubbing his chin. He hadn’t realized how mannered he was; he wished he could shout out, "Stop fiddling with your ear!" And as for that body posture… well, he would have to do something about that. But, overall, he was impressed with what he saw. Those clothes made him look rather striking. You handsome devil, Doctor.' And Romana gets to see her previous self as well at another point and gets embarrassed by how arrogant she comes off.
The action moved along at a quick pace. There is no filler in this one. The plot twisted and turned so much that I never lost interest. One of the best twists employed by Morris in this one is his use of the TARDIS as a kind of Back to the Future Delorean, where the heroes keep having to go back in the past to a time before they previously arrived. From the Amazon.com listing, you can see this title got 5 stars for 13 reviews, so clearly other Whovians agree this is one of the very best.
Big Finish:
"The Apocalypse Element" Big Fisnish Audio
Submitted by Chad Moore
"The Apocalypse Element" is nowhere near as bad as its
reputation suggests. However, it must rank as one of
the noisest plays Big Finish has ever done; at times I
found myself wincing and having to turn the volume
down. All those explosions, screams and Daleks ranting
isn't good on the ear drums.
Certainly this story could be seen as a prelude to the
Time War, with the Daleks successfully invading
Gallifrey and exterminating Time Lords left, right and
center. Colin Baker gives a fantastic performance and
it's a real treat to hear Lalla Ward's Romana again. I
still have a hard time swallowing that she'd willingly
return to Gallifrey and become President, but that's
just me. I also find it odd that the Doctor wasn't the
least bit curious as to how Romana returned from
E-Space; once again the BF boys assuming every one has
read the New and Missing Adventures novels. A little
explanation wouldn't have gone amiss, especially for
new listeners/fans.
Anyway, there seemed to be an attempt to tie in the
Eye of Harmony/human retinal pattern business from the
Paul McGann TV Movie. I'll have to give it another
listen as I'm still not exactly sure how the Daleks
were defeated (all the explosions and shouting
obscured the explanations). Still, a good little
story.
"The One Doctor" Big
Finish Audio
Submitted by Alan Siler
Each year, Big Finish's December release is something a little different, a little special. In that vein, "The One Doctor" is a cute, whimsical, often funny tale of imposters and mistaken identities. The Doctor and Mel travel to the Vulgar End of space to the planet Generios, where everthing seems mediocre and same. They find themselves in a celebration in the streets. The planet has just been saved from certain destruction at the hands of the vile Skelloids by none other than the legendary Doctor and his companion, Sally-Ann!
Certain that the person in question is an imposter and not one of his future selves, the Doctor sets about to unmask the fraud...and only manages to wind up in jail as the person trying to dupe the other Doctor!
But when a second alien menace in the same day attacks Generios system, only a true Doctor can save the people.
The drama features lively performances by Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford, supported ably by Christopher Biggins and Claire Buckfield as Doctor-impersonator Banto Zame and Sally-Ann. The story is fast-paced, fun and full of jokes and clever dialogue. Upon landing on Generios, Mel makes the obligatory comment "All these corridors look the same!" to which the Doctor proudly replies, "Not to a corridor veteran like me." When Mel and Zame find themselves in a dangerous situation, its Mel who takes the lead and solves the way out. Zame remarks at how calm she is, how unrattled she is by the deadly threat, she tells him "Believe me, when I'm scared, I can scream the paint off the walls!"
While this disk isn't essential Doctor Who, it doesn't intend to be. Its simply a fun, humourous romp for the lead characters and the audience. Make sure to stick around for the two hidden bonus tracks! And listen for the mention of the Pescatons!
"Spare Parts" Big
Finish Audio
Submitted by Alan Siler
Usually, when people who are not familiar with Big Finish ask something like 'What's the best one they've done?' or 'Where's a good place to start?', more likely than not the answer they get is "Spare Parts". And for good reason. This is a solid story with a clever script, some very good acting, good sound design, and it gives you a window into the origin of the Cybermen that is highly affecting and disturbingly plausible.
The Doctor and Nyssa find themselves on a very Earth-like planet. The Doctor quickly begins to suspect where they've actually landed, but Nyssa is in the dark. As they meet a few of the locals and (naturally) get separated, the truth begins to dawn on Nyssa: they have arrived not on Earth at all, but on Mondas, and are witnessing the birth of the Cybermen.
At the point we enter the story, the Cybermen are used mainly as a police force, patroling the city and enforcing a curfew at night, and as work crews who are involved in some task on the planet's surface that would be impossible for 'normal' Mondasians to accomplish.
The Mondasian society is very well portrayed. We meet citizens from an average family who, during the course of the story, has their daughter 'selected' and taken from them and turned into a Cyberman (alongside her older brother who wishes it would have been him), to the medical specialist in charge of the selections (herself a member of a society of Sisters that, she's been assured, is exempt from the selections), to one of the scientists working on developing and refining the Cyberization process.
The Cybermen themselves are fascinating, and are shown to be in variant stages of development: the voices we hear mainly are those from "The Tenth Planet", with their mechanical sing-song pattern. But as we get more into the story, we begin to encounter variations, mainly in the Committee, which sounds more like the Troughton-era Cybermen, particularly the disembodied Cyber-voice barking orders to Tobias Vaughan in "The Invasion". You also get hints of different looking Cybermen via the dialogue.
Both Davison and Sutton are brilliant in this story, delivering very convincing portrayals of their characters caught up in deadly and frightening circumstances, with Nyssa recognizing that the evolution of the Cybermen will eventually spell the death of Adric, and the Doctor wrestling with his own involvement in the events: How much can he do to help the Mondasians without changing the established course of history, or should he take his opportunity to put a stop to a universal threat in its infancy?
There are some chilling scenes in "Spare Parts", some of them very reminiscent of the Holocaust. In Part One, the Hartley family must hide Nyssa as a Cyber-patrol storms their home looking for strangers. Later, near the end of the story, Yvonne Hartley returns to her family, partially Cyberized, and barely recognizes them through her conditioning. In the end, as the Cybermen begin to exert their control over the planet, Mondasians are herded into death chambers, disturbingly similar to Jews, gays, Gypsies, etc. being forced into the gas chambers by the Nazis.
This very dark story has earned its reputation as the best that Big Finish has to offer. Written by Marc Platt (who also wrote "Ghost Light"), it not only shows how and why the Cybermen were first developed, but also ties together many of the established facts about the Cybermen and their history into one cohesive narrative and shows how all of those events were factors in (or developed from) their origin.
Other Products:
"Monsters and Villains" BBC Book by Justin Richards
Submitted by Alan Siler
From the cover illustration, featuring the Doctor, Rose and a new Dalek (and in fact reinforced by the back cover illustration of a Slitheen), you naturally assume that this book is a New Series tie-in, when in fact a great deal of the book is dedicated to the Old Series. Monsters and Villains is without any doubt aimed at new fans whose exposure to the world of Doctor Who is watching the Eccleston episodes, and offers those readers a wealth of new information on each race and adversary it covers, both Old and New.
The book's strength is definitely in its illustration. It is a very photograph-heavy book. It outlines every appearance of each entry with a one-paragraph description of each story and 2-3 sidebars offering up additional story information. While this seems sketchy to long-time fans, it serves to immerse new audiences to the rich history of DW. This is augmented by script extracts, production photos, conceptual sketches, and other tidbits of info that flesh out each entry from both Old and New Series.
As for the Old, most of the inclusions are the obvious ones: Autons, Cybermen, Daleks (all three featured prominently in the new series, and arranged alphabetically so that they all appear at the beginning of the book), Ice Warriors, Sontarans, etc. There's also sections on the Sea Devils and Silurians and on Yeti. And possibly most surprising, three one-off monsters are given equal treatment here: the Hæmovores, the Zygons, and the Morbius Monster.
But the real value of this book, to old and new fans alike, is the entries on New Series aliens. Here we are treated to a biography of Cassandra, a history of the evolution of the Forest of Cheem, a traveler's guide to the planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius, and smaller glimpses into the various Platform One aliens. All this serves to greatly flesh out these characters in ways the television episodes were unable to. And as each was written by Russell T. Davies, they must surely be considered canon. These sections also include greater behind-the-scenes 'featurettes' on things like the design of the Slitheen, the creation of the costumes and the digital models used in some of the chase scenes.
All-in-all this is a very fun book, well worth the expenditure. Volume Two, Aliens and Enemies, will be out in June 2006, and will feature the Sycorax, the rebirth of the Cybermen, a number of Season Two aliens (maybe we'll actually find out what the Cat People are called), Season One aliens not included in the first volume (the Gelth and the Reapers), and more Old Series menaces like the Celestial Toymaker, the Robots of Death and Sutekh.
