This story is my bête noire. Will Sue agree? Or will we end up sleeping in separate beds this week?
I don’t like Colony in Space. This is why our updates have lost some momentum of late – I simply refused to subject myself to more than one episode a night. Sue, on the other hand, would have been happy to knock this one off in a couple of days. So blame me. And now, without further ado, and with Nicol along for the ride for the first three episodes, it’s time for a Colonic in Space.
Episode One
The episode begins with a massive spoiler.
Sue: So the Master is in this one as well?
I sigh.
Sue: It’s the Time Lords! Have they decided to end the Doctor’s exile? That was quick. I don’t think he learnt a damn thing.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Doctor is working on his faulty dematerialisation circuit.
Sue: Why is he playing with a skateboard wheel? And what does Jo actually do between alien invasions? Apart from answer the phone?
The Doctor leads Jo into the TARDIS for a quick tour, but the ship suddenly dematerialises without the Doctor’s consent. Seconds later, a perplexed Brigadier walks into an now-empty room.
Me: Do you wish the Brigadier had gone with them?
Sue: Not really. Somebody has to stay behind to look after the Earth.
As the TARDIS hurtles through the vortex, the Doctor tells Jo to look at the scanner.
Sue: His telly’s broken. He really should get that fixed.
Meanwhile, on a very bleak alien planet, a mining robot is doing its thing.
Nicol: It’s Wall-E. But not as cute.
And then the TARDIS arrives…
Me: Did you notice that the TARDIS materialises differently in this story? It just pops into the frame.
Sue: I can’t say I’m bothered. I suppose the fans get worked up about that, do they? Don’t tell me – they blame it on the Time Lords because they’re controlling his TARDIS. Am I right?
She pretends to be above it all, but when I inform her that she’s right, I can tell that she’s secretly chuffed to bits.
However, when the Doctor opens the doors to the outside world, Sue is very upset.
Sue: What happened to his little porch? I liked his little porch. That little porch explained a lot.
Faced with the prospect of an alien planet to explore, Jo immediately starts freaking out.
Sue: That’s an interesting reaction from Jo. It’s very realistic and I like that. I’d probably feel the same way if I suddenly found myself on an alien planet. In fact, that’s exactly how I felt when I arrived at that Doctor Who convention in Newcastle the other week.
Nicol: I don’t like Jo’s belt. It looks like she’s wearing a seatbelt that she’s stolen from a plane.
Sue: Yes, it’s very Wonder Woman.
Me: Oh look, it’s Penny’s dad from Just Good Friends.
Sue: He’s in Doctor Who a lot. He just can’t get enough. I bet he auditioned for the role of the Doctor every time it came up.
The colonists are made-up of recognisable faces, some of whom Sue gets terribly wrong (“Is that Bill Odie?”), and some of which she gets right.
Sue: Oh, it’s Gail Tilsley from Coronation Street. She looked like a hamster, even then.
As the colonists start banging on about crop rotations and mineral rights, Sue appears to be engrossed.
Sue: So this is basically exactly the same plot as Avatar, yes? Does Jo fall in love with one of the green blokes?
And then some colonists are attacked by what looks a giant lizard.
Sue: Quick! We are surrounded by back projection! Run!
But it’s the background hum in the colonists’ base that really gets on Sue’s nerves.
Sue: Why is this location infested by a swarm of bees?
Me: Maybe the bees are hanging around here waiting for all the flowers to grow?
Nicol: Maybe all the bees from The Happening left Earth and ended up here?
Me: That would make a lot of sense given that nothing is happening here.
Sue: Hang on a minute, how did a giant lizard get through the bloody door?
A few seconds later, the Doctor makes the very same observation.
Me: You are just as clever as the Doctor, love. Well done.
As Sue pats herself on the back, the Doctor is attacked by an IMC robot.
Sue: That’s not even remotely scary.
Nicol: It looks like an easily surprised kitten when it sticks its arms up in the air like that.
Episode Two
Sue and Nicol both admire the Doctor’s line “I’m every kind of scientist”, but the Doctor’s mode of transportation leaves a lot to be desired.
Sue: Didn’t The Banana Splits ride around in buggies like that?
When IMC’s Morgan enters the fray, I initiate the usual procedures.
Me: Come on, love. You’ll let me down if you don’t recognise him.
Sue: Is it Downtown Abbey Man?
Me: Downtown Abbey Man would have been eight years old when this was made.
Nicol: Oh, mother!
Me: I sell this blog on your ability to recognise actors who have appeared in EastEnders and now you’re showing me up.
Five minutes later, I have put her out of her misery.
Sue: Oh, it’s Barry’s dad!
Me: Yes, it’s Barry’s dad. Aka Roy Evans, or Tony Caunter to his friends.
When Morris Perry turns up as Dent, Sue believes she’s on a roll.
Sue: It’s Bryan Talbot.
Don’t be impressed. Seriously, don’t. The only reason she knows who Bryan Talbot is is because she used to work with his wife. It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.
Sue: Is the Doctor drinking Ribena in this scene?
Nicol: No, it’s blood. I told you he was dressed as Dracula. But at least the other characters refer to the fact that the Doctor is wearing fancy dress, although it is a bit rich coming from someone dressed in a tabard.
Sue: The room on this spaceship looks like your average Travelodge. It just needs a little coffee maker and you’d be set. It’s even got cable television.
When the Doctor and Morgan are ambushed by green-skinned natives, Nicol ends up sniggering at the Doctor’s highly stylised combat moves. But Sue is distracted by something else.
Sue: Oi! Roy Evans! How about getting out of the car and giving the Doctor a hand? You coward!
And then Sue believes that she has picked up on a subtle in-joke.
Sue: Gail Tilsely just laughed when she mentioned Jim’ll Fix It.
Me: Now then, now then, now then, it’s not a reference to Jim’ll Fix It. That doesn’t start for another four years.
Sue: Really? So why did she laugh like that? It’s as if she knew.
Me: Either Helen Worth is a time traveller with incredibly low aspirations or it’s just a coincidence. Take your pick.
Sue: Is the bad guy the same actor who played that business man who was in league with the Cybermen? You know, the one who said “Packerrrrrr” a lot.
Me: No, but I think you’ll find that Morris Perry attended the same ‘Oozing Menace’ acting classes as Kevin Stoney.
Sue: I like it. The acting is very good in this story.
When Morgan and the Doctor finally reach the dome, Nicol points excitedly at the screen.
Nicol: It’s the Crystal Dome from The Crystal Maze! Is it full of shiny bits of paper?
Sue: It’s a mini-Epcot. You know, I’d love to live in a dome like that. That design is particularly good against the wind.
The episode concludes with the Doctor being attacked by a robot with monster claws for hands.
Sue: Now that is ridiculous.
Nicol: They should have stuck some cat paws on it.
Sue: When does the Master turn up?
Episode Three
Sue: The colonists’ leader’s hair is very shiny. Actually, everyone has immaculate hair when you consider that they are living in a dust bowl. They don’t have any food but they must have plenty of conditioner.
As Bernard Kay’s Caldwell ruminates on the colonists’ predicament, Sue comes up with a theory.
Sue: This bloke reminds me of the Brigadier. He’ll come good in the end. You can tell that because of the moustache. In fact, only the really bad guys don’t have moustaches, apart from the Doctor and Jo, and the bad guy who is pretending to be a good guy and therefore has a beard. It’s fairly easy to work out.
Nicol: The costumes are all over the place in this story – it’s a cross between Tron and Game of Thrones.
But Sue is drawn in by the plot, and by the time Jo and Winton manage to escape being chained to a bomb, she seems to be lapping it up.
Sue: You go, girl!
As IMC’s lackeys chase down Winton, Sue is genuinely concerned.
Sue: Oh dear, they’ll get their nice, clean boots all mucky.
When Winton is machine-gunned off-screen by Caldwell, Sue recoils in horror.
Sue: How grim is this? Oh, wait a minute, it’s the man with the moustache – he’ll just be pretending.
She is, of course, right.
Sue: You know, there’s nothing wrong with this story. I don’t know why you look so depressed whenever I suggest that we watch an episode.
As the colonists and IMC continue to argue over the rights to Uxarieus, Sue believes she has spotted a fatal flaw in the colonists’ argument.
Sue: Why are the colonists so determined to stay here on this shit hole? It’s not exactly Barbados, is it? Or that lovely planet in Avatar. They can’t even get their crops to grow there. I’d have left this dump ages ago.
The episode concludes with Jo being forced into a hole in a wall.
Sue: I’m enjoying this one. I think I like it because it’s not all about the Doctor. I like learning about the other characters and their predicaments. It’s very involving. Yeah, I like this one a lot.
I resist the urge to throw a cushion at her.
Episode Four
Sue: It really was back projection all along!
Me: And they would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky colonists. Yes, this is basically a politically charged version of Scooby-Doo.
The colonists are up in arms, especially a man called Leeson.
Sue: Peter Sutcliffe doesn’t look very happy about it.
And then – sigh – the Master turns up to muddy the waters.
Sue: Oooh! It’s the Master!
Me: You knew he was coming. They gave it away in the very first sentence of the story!
Sue: Even though I knew he was coming, I’m still surprised to see him arrive. Does that make any sense?
Me: No.
Sue: It does throw my facial hair theory out of the window, though. Shame.
More doubts about the story begin to creep in when we reach the primitives’ city.
Sue: OK, this is starting to look a bit cheap now.
And then another type of alien turns up.
Sue: OK, this is starting to look a bit weird now. Are all the natives on this planet made from papier-mâché?
But that’s nothing compared to the aliens’ ultimate leader.
Sue: It’s a baby with a walnut for a head. That’s very disturbing. Anything that looks like a baby and talks like an adult is just wrong. It’s starting to freak me out.
The episode concludes with the Master threatening to shoot the Doctor and Jo, as a gunfight between IMC and the colonists rages all around them.
Sue: You know, this isn’t bad at all. If this had been four episodes long, it would have been perfect.
Me: We still have two episode to go.
Sue: I know.
Episode Five
It’s another one of those episodes when Sue doesn’t say very much; a combination of being genuinely involved in the story and her running out of things to say about moustaches. At one point she even says: “Is there really any point in me making jokes about peripheral vision anymore?”.
It takes the Master’s presence to prompt a response from her.
Sue: I really like the Master. He’s always fun to watch. He’s very charming and you can’t help but root for him.
The Doctor and Jo manage to break into the Master’s TARDIS.
Sue: This looks exactly like the Doctor’s TARDIS. Do they make them out of Gallifreyan flatpacks?
But the Master’s TARDIS has something that the Doctor’s doesn’t.
Sue: Why doesn’t the Doctor have a security feature like that? The Master always manages to show him up, doesn’t he?
Me: Yes, making the Doctor slide along the floor like that is pretty humiliating.
Sue: It’s not exactly Mission Impossible, is it? And the Master doesn’t have a little porch either. That’s a bit strange. It’s as if they’re just filming this in the Doctor’s TARDIS.
Me: Don’t be absurd, woman!
Sue: And now the music sounds like something from The Clangers.
Me: The Clangers in Doctor Who? That’s even more absurd!
Jo manages to trip the Master’s alarm (“You dozy mare!”) and gas starts pouring into the console room.
Sue: Just stick your cloak in the pipe!
Later, when the Master and the Doctor take a buggy to the ruined city, they are ambushed by primitives waving their spears in the air.
Sue: That is very funny.
Me: It reminds me that thing the Sand People do in Star Wars.
Sue: Maybe George Lucas ripped it off.
Me: Well, Star Wars is full of aliens made from papier-mâché, so it’s not impossible.
The colonists are told that they will have to leave the planet, and they can’t take more than seven kilos of luggage with them.
Sue: That’s worse than Ryanair!
The episode concludes with the Master threatening to kill Jo with a Bakewell tart.
Sue: I’m still enjoying this. Stop looking at me like that.
Episode Six
The Master and the Doctor are escorted by the primitives into a lumber room.
Sue: What the hell is a lumber room? Where are all the planks of wood? You can’t tease me with carpentry and then fail to deliver like that.
As the Doctor brings the Master up to speed with the planet’s history, Sue identifies a modern parallel.
Sue: They worshiped technology? So they were Apple fans?
The Master proudly shows the Doctor the Doomsday weapon created by the inhabitants of the planet.
Sue: The Doctor and the Master always end up working with each other at the end. The Master is crying out for a relationship with his so-called nemesis. He must be really lonely. Just look at how upset he is when the Doctor turns him down. The Master really should get himself a companion.
Meanwhile, and for no readily apparent reason, Winton and an IMC guard start mud wrestling.
Sue: This isn’t turning me on. I just want to be clear about that. Ouch! I think he really punched him in the face!
The colonists’ ship takes off. And immediately explodes.
Sue: No way! That’s ****ing grim! They must have snuck out when no one was looking. They’ll be fine. It’s fine. It had better be fine!
As the Master tempts the Doctor with universal domination, Sue believes we are about to witness the start of the Time War. Again.
Sue: Does the Doctor use this super-weapon to blow up Gallifrey?
The Master’s plans are interrupted by the high priest in a high chair.
Sue: Uh oh, here comes Yoda again.
The Guardian instructs the Doctor to set the Doomsday weapon to self-destruct.
Sue: Why didn’t they just do that earlier? Or is it because the walnut baby couldn’t reach it with his tiny arms? And don’t you think a self-destruct lever should be protected a little bit more than that? You could easily knock against it by mistake and blow yourself up.
As the city is evacuated, Sue is drawn to Roger Delgado’s athleticism.
Sue: The Master runs like a girl!
The Doctor and Jo manage to escape just as the city – and the weapon – explode behind them.
Sue: Why kill all the natives like that? It’s not their fault! That seems a bit extreme.
The Master legs it and he manages to escape in his TARDIS.
Sue: The Master’s TARDIS just popped out of the frame and he’s not being controlled by the Time Lords, so that blows the fans’ theory out of the water. All you are left with now is an incompetent director.
Meanwhile, back at UNIT HQ…
Sue: Yay! The Brig! I’ve missed him.
But the Brigadier isn’t impressed by the Doctor’s little jaunt.
Sue: They’ve only been gone a few seconds. That’s pretty clever.
Me: It didn’t feel like a few seconds to me…
Sue: Oh, shut up.
The Final Score
Sue: The last episode was very weak. The first four episodes were great – it was heading for tops marks at one point – but the alien creatures let it down. And even though I like the Master, was he really necessary? His inclusion felt like a contractual obligation. In fact, the plot was really good until it started to go a bit mad towards the end. The acting was pretty good, too. It’s a tough one. I’ve certainly seen a lot worse. I’ll give it a respectable -
6/10
Me: Phew. Any higher than a six and I would have instigated divorce proceedings.
Sue: I don’t see what your problem is with this story. Can I mark it up to an eight, just to annoy you?
Me: If you do, I’ll grow a moustache.
The experiment continues…
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“Me: The Clangers in Doctor Who? That’s even more absurd!”
Heh heh heh.
God, I keep putting this DVD back every time I pick it up. I really don’t want to ever experience this story
There’s nothing wrong with this story, it’s no classic but it’s entertaining enough. Yeah the special effects are crap, certain elements of the plot don’t make any sense, there’s no need for the Master to be there and it’s too long. But doesn’t that sound like a good 40% of Pertwee era stories?
They’ve sat through worse and provided they carry on the experiment will sit through worse, I mean just look at the double header due in 5 stories time.
That said I’m sure we’re all looking forward to what’s coming straight after that pair of stinkers…
‘That said I’m sure we’re all looking forward to what’s coming straight after that pair of stinkers…’
I’m prepared to be surprised by a Not We’s reaction to ‘The Mutants’.
Except for the reaction to That Bloke. That Bloke’s always terrible, no matter who’s looking at him…
And I honestly see no hope for ‘The Time Monster’.
I recently watched “The Mutants” for the first time since 1985 and actually really enjoyed it – even if That Bloke did make me grind my teeth a little bit.
Anyway – it’s all worth it, if only for the Monty Python “It’s” man at the start…
Sadly the best thing in the Time Monster wont have much effect on Sue, and thats the Queen’s…
I dont dislike this episode though Neil. 6 is fine for it. And Im delighted that Sue is really getting into the episodes. Its like how we all would want it to go if we had someone we desperately want to like our Show and she’s on the hook I think. Theres nothing truly terrible coming up that I can think of, and then were on to #4. Its a long time before theres anything to worry about showing her. Some not so great ones here and there, but nothing TERRIBLE.
It’s not disastrous, but could have been done a) without the Master or b) with the Masters appearance left as a surprise. The Time Lords could have just been aware “someone” was trying to steal the doomsday weapon.
@Russell — I think that by the time the Master shows up, most viewers had been anesthetised (hypnotised??) into forgetting that he’d been mentioned in the first scene of episode one!
(Didn’t that happen to Sue as well, IIRC?)
I watched this for the first time on DVD a couple of weeks ago (had the VHS, never watched it!) and was pleasantly surprised – it’s not great but it’s not as awful as I expected.
BTW Neil – if you HAD thrown a cushion, would the “cushions thrown” count have gone down?
I like this one. Maybe cos I read the novelization first, but still, I’d watch it before a whole lot of other episodes. 6 or 7, somewhere in there. Nothing wrong with the story itself, and the production issues are no more egregious than any other serial back in its day.
Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon was one of the 10 Pinnacle US releases in the late 70s. It was my first encounter with any Doctor other than the 4th and with the Master in a non-rotting form. It was also a really good read. The actual episodes were rather a let-down; the cheap production values didn’t come close to how I had visualized the story, and six episodes was just much too long for the material.
It isn’t THAT bad – it just looks a hell of a lot cheaper than some of the other stories this season…
I taped it off the telly when they did repeats back in the 90s in New Zealand, and I had no problems watching it a couple of times…. ‘Inferno’ is still my favourite Pertwee story, though….
The Master is a bit superfluous in this story, yes, but if they had have gone with the original ‘generic corrupt megalomaniac official’ as was originally planned, the fans would have been carping ‘Whyyyyyy didn’t you use The Master…’
The thing that dates Colostomy In Space the most for me is that quaint convention, seemingly unique to 70s BBC sci fi, in which the propulsion unit of a complex interstellar craft from the far future is charmingly referred to as a ‘motor’.
Now you all have this mental image of Caldwell lifting up the hood of Ashe’s rocket with a sharp intake of breath and going “Ooh no mate, your motors have gone. This is going to cost you.” It’s not going to go away again, ever.
To be fair to 1970s Doctor Who writers, using the term ‘motor’ for a very large rocket isn’t as silly as it seems. The term ‘rocket motor’ is used by engineers for full-size (up to and including man-carrying) rockets as well as the term ‘rocket engine’.
However, the big caveat is that ‘rocket motor’ refers to solid-fuel devices, e.g. most famously the two massive boosters either side of a Space Shuttle stack; ‘rocket engine’ refers to liquid-fuel devices, e.g. all the engines of a Saturn V launch vehicle, or the engines of the Space Shuttle Orbiter (the winged vehicle).
So yes, it’s perfectly permissible to use the term ‘rocket motor’ even for a really huge man-carrying solid-fuel launch vehicle, but you wouldn’t use the term for anything else because you wouldn’t use solid-fuel rockets for anything other than a one-shot launch.
Excellent website, BTW, basing the reviews on one’s better half’s reactions to each programme is sheer genius.
“I’d offer you a lift home but somebody nicked my motor.” — 10th Doctor, in “Blink”
“Typical bloke, straight to fixing his motor.” — Amy Pond, in “Meanwhile in the TARDIS, 2″
That’s different, it’s making light of the vernacular for a vehicle. Old-Who uses ‘motor’ as the techinical word for a rather more sophisticated form of engine. It’s a reflection of the old British cardboard-and-string love of DIY, like your Dad trying to fix the TV.
Good on you Sue. I really don’t mind this one – better any day than Fairground Repulsion or Mind of Porridge. Ham-fisted to be sure, but a reasonably game stab at the “big idea” allegory approach so prevalent at the time. Reithian principles to the fore.
To be fair, Caunter was a tough spot. The leap from intergalactic corporate thug to possibly the only car-dealer in history never to even think of fiddling the VAT is a difficult one to make. Particularly since he didn’t give a **** about the colonists’ old cut-and-shut banger exploding as soon as it was off the forecourt.
I reckon she’s going to really like the next one… Who does Hammer, Goats in Socks, mmm…
As for Clangers, oh dear God, she’s getting far too good at this isn’t she?
I still think The Daemons views like Jo Grant retelling it later to us via her MySpace page.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would, after reading reviews that made it sound like the dullest thing ever. The storyline is noticeably more sophisticated than previous alien planet stories, when it was just good humans vs evil aliens – now there’s good humans, evil humans, ambiguous aliens and the Master thrown in as well, so there’s plenty going on to fill out the six episodes. It’s not perfect, sure, but it makes for a nice change of pace from the UNIT stories.
We saw Mary and Bryan at a comic convention in Newcastle today; we did wonder if you or Sue knew them
I didn’t like scary walnut head baby overlord thing, either. But this story is really only a bit meh, not really bleh
So, Neil, did you grow up reading the book, too? One day someone’ll do an academic paper on the split between what people think if they read the proper one first or if they just come straight to the mud, because for me this one’s the biggest Pertwee Gap between the fantastic story on the page and the muddy television – surely less a bête noire than a bête gris et brun. I doubt even Geoffrey Beevers’ lovely voice could involve Sue in Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, though. Shame.
Even so, some good ones this time…
“The room on this spaceship looks like your average Travelodge.”
But slightly less evil and graspingly capitalist.
“He’ll come good in the end. You can tell that because of the moustache.”
“Yes, this is basically a politically charged version of Scooby-Doo.”
“That’s worse than Ryanair!”
“You can’t tease me with carpentry and then fail to deliver like that.”
Though…
“It’s the Time Lords! Have they decided to end the Doctor’s exile? That was quick; I don’t think he learnt a damn thing.”
Just you wait until the end of Pertwee. He’ll be lecturing everyone on behalf of the ticket inspectors – it’s like bloody Stockholm Syndrome. And Sue’s clearly become inured to Dudley Simpson’s music, too, because this score’s easily among his worst (though they do get much better, much later).
“The Master is crying out for a relationship with his so-called nemesis. He must be really lonely…”
True, though it just points up how the best scene in this has already been done in The War Games, where someone else with sinister facial hair (that rule only applies to humans, clearly) offers the Doctor not a rose and some chocolates but a half-share in the Universe.
“The last episode was very weak.”
She won’t thank you when the next story has exactly the same cop-out, then.
And, of course:
“Why kill all the natives like that? It’s not their fault! That seems a bit extreme.”
Yes, well, when I wrote in detail about the Colony In Space DVD, I tried to come up with an answer – how this story confounds expectations by inverting the usual Doctor Who ‘ancient evil on the rise’ – but even so, the Doctor seems a bit of a git to say ‘Oh, go on, die then’, and isn’t that handy for making the colonists the good guys rather than rapacious intruders just like IMC?
And to think this was the same Malcolm Hulke that was so adept at giving us different levels of moral ambiguity within the same factions of humans and aliens the year before.
re: TV vs mud.
One of the reasons why I’m fond of some of the Troughtons is because I first encountered them in Targetvision.
In these lazy hazy crazy days of YouTube and DVDs, I’ve found quite a few of them to be a crashing disappointment. Much like everything ever done with Bronte or Austen.
Another thing for younger participants to bear in mind is that at the time you had one crucial 25min window to focus on this stuff. VCRs were in their minority infancy, there was no BBCi, endless syndication (a la Star Trek) or series box-sets. Saturday night after Final Score was it, and you had to lie on the floor with your face virtually inside the telly so as not to miss a moment. Then later you had the sodding Generation Game to endure – and will someone please tell me when exactly Bruce Forsyth is finally going to regenerate? While we’re at it, who should be the next Bruce?
Who should be the next Bruce? Basil Brush of course!
Enduring BB (and Grandstand) before Dr Who could start was worse than the parents’ stuff that came after, at least you could stop watching telly after Who (unless the only alternative was going to bed, of course).
Oh yeah… I’d completely blotted out the posh fox memory (psychological self-preservation probably).
Forty years of progress and BBC Saturday nights have managed to come completely full circle. Amateur have-a-bash and doing-silly-things light ents (with Brucie) preceding Dr Who.
What are you holding by the way? Looks a bit like you’re about to mainline a model spaceship…
Has everyone forgotten Larry Grayson and Jim Davidson already? Brucie went through his own dodgy regeneration and ratings crash period YEARS ago.
I used to enjoy it all! Right up to Starsky and Hutch.
It’s a sonic something.
Grayson and Davidson – ah yes. More repressed memories, it seems.
And they seem to have cunningly welded together BB and Generation Game into some pratting about involving a neurotic mechanical hare. Nothing new under the sun, eh. Especially in telly exec land…
Mole:
Mmkay.
Actually, I’ve just used something similar-looking to piss off my cat (worming time), and it certainly turned her sonic for a while.
PolarityReversed: honest, here’s a closeup: http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww153/Frankymole/4413865055d2bd98a427.jpg
It’s still my favourite story from Season 8, but that’s not saying much admittedly.
It was worth the wait! Just watched this one on DVD, so I awaited this one with interest and wasn’t disappointed.
Not quite as bad as I Remembered, but best viewed in limited doses.
Anyone else spot the colonist wearing Pertwee’s astronaut outfit from AMBASSADORS??
“It’s a baby with a walnut for a head. That’s very disturbing. ”
No it’s not, it’s Les Dawson. Just look at the picture at the top of the page!
And once again, I did the thing that I always do: be surprised that someone doesn’t like Colony in Space considering I really enjoyed it, and then getting quite some way through the description before realising that I’m thinking of FRONTIER in Space. This happens VERY frequently.
In my case I got it confused with Carnival of Monsters. That’s somewhat worse!
Excellent stuff as always!
Neil, are you sure you didn’t make Sue lower her score just to save the marriage? Her comments throughout seem to warrant more than a 6/10… ;o)
Neil, is that you in the “easily surprised kitten” video?!
Obviously the Time Lords stole his little porch!
*OR* the Doctor himself removed it so as to get the console out during Inferno. And then couldn’t remember where he left it.
When Neil Gaiman signs up to write his second episode of Doctor Who, he will obviously set the whole thing in the little porch, after the Doctor and companions find it behind the bins.
Maybe he swapped the little porch for a little shop.
Where did all these fans of Colony in Space come from? I hate it; its so boring.
“They worshiped technology? So they were Apple fans?”
• No, Sue – they worshiped *technology*; they were electric fans
I do love the idea of “Gallifreyan flatpacks” – I often used to wonder if they’d have an MFI or Ikea back home (that’d explain the Doctor’s penchant for TARDIS DIY…
THIS WEEK’S T-SHIRT: “The Master runs like a girl!” (of course he does – that’s why he wants a relationship with the Doctor)
And I love the “I can’t say I’m bothered. I suppose the fans get worked up about that, do they?” comment. Really, we’re back to Ming-mongs again now, aren’t we?
Oh, and I LOVE the kitten…
‘Faced with the prospect of an alien planet to explore, Jo immediately starts freaking out.’
Jo ALWAYS does that whenever they go anywhere, though – she spends most of an episode of ‘The Curse of Peladon’ bitching that instead of going on an adventure to some distant planet she wanted to go dancing with the world’s creepiest captain, then when told that she can go anywhere in space and time at the end of ‘Planet of the Daleks’ the only thing she wants to do is to go home…
‘You know, I’d love to live in a dome like that. ‘
The Not-We live in the dome…
‘Sue: I really like the Master. He’s always fun to watch. He’s very charming and you can’t help but root for him.’
This is, I think, one of the reasons I’ve never particularly liked the Pertwee era beyond Season 7. Just when it looks like he’s really getting into his stride, someone else comes along and steals the show from him – Delgado is charming where Pertwee is belligerent and rude, then you-know-who ambles in like he hasn’t been away and he doesn’t like the third Doctor either…
Oh yes – you forgot to point out Douglas Camfield’s cameo, and that the IMC ship has an alarm that sounds exactly like the incidental music from ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’!
Camfield’s cameo? What’s that then? Not that Martin bloke on the Adjudicator ID?
“That’s an interesting reaction from Jo. It’s very realistic and I like that. I’d probably feel the same way if I suddenly found myself on an alien planet. In fact, that’s exactly how I felt when I arrived at that Doctor Who convention in Newcastle the other week.”
Cutting Sue, cutting, but it can’t quite disguise how far you have journeyed down the road to Fandom…
Anyway, sorry Neil, but I have to side with your wife in this particular matrimonial contretemps. This is a perfectly decent story, and I would probably put it down as the second best of the season. It’s not in the same league as Hulke’s earlier efforts, but the clash between idealism and capitalism is handled well, while Kay and Ringham once again deliver top-notch performances for the show – it’s a great shame this proved to be their Who swansong. The Master’s presence is unnecessary, but Delgado and Pertwee have their chemistry down pat by now and it is striking how tempted the Doctor appears to be by the Master’s offer of universal domination, which just goes to show that he is not completely immune to temptation. Mind you, we do get to see a much more relaxed and friendly third Doctor here, luxuriating in getting away from Earth while finally starting to build a closer friendship with Jo. As others have said, some of the effects and costumes aren’t great, but this is Doctor Who we are talking about! Compared with what lies in store in some of the later Pertwees, this story’s look is positively sophisticated…
Topical question: are you going to go back and revisit Galaxy Four and The Underwater Menace at some point now that they exist more completely than previously imagined? (I know everyone but me hates these stories, but still… best Xmas present in years!)
The Radio Times website mentions a second “Lost In Time” set, and later says “Well, one or two other leads are being pursued at the moment. More than that I’m not saying!”
Talk about a tease! If that’s the case then it’s the most exciting Who news since 2 Entertain announced they’re pairing “Shada” and “More Than 30 Years In the Tardis” for DVD release later this year.
Obviously that last bit is a joke.
And yes obviously that should read “next year”.
Colony’s problem – if you see it as a problem – is that no two elements of the story follow the same sense of scale, or indeed, *any* sense of scale. This time however it’s mainly due to sloppy plotting rather than sloppy direction or an undernourished budget, as nobody on the other side of the camera has grasped how big a planet should be, and all the script problems stem from this. Living space on Earth is at a premium and one way or another the planet is vital to everyone’s future, but only one pathetic bunch of idealists and one IMC rocket ship has bothered to turn up. The chief ‘threat’ is this great big universe-threatening weapon, the first plot point we’re introduced to, but it’s plunked in the middle of nowhere in an area which, on-screen, never appears to stretch further than half a mile – and it STILL manages to come across like an afterthought. As for this ‘clash of ideals’, if either party hadn’t been too lazy to pack up and walk any distance away from each other, none of it need ever have happened. Not once is there any indication that the colonists have tried spreading out and growing their essential food supplies elsewhere, and the IMC personnel have a rocket, for Christ’s sake. Take this away, and there’s no need for the ‘ajudicator’ or the ‘primitives’ subplots either, so we could have skipped straight to episode four when the Master shows his face, triggered off a somewhat duff explosion and then all gone home. Which the colonists will have to do anyway if they don’t want to be massacred by IMC reinforcements, so it’s not like very much more has been resolved by virtue of us hanging around.
I say ‘if you see it as a problem’ since, in this respect, Colony In Space isn’t doing anything more ridiculous than Genesis Of The Daleks does later. So if you like, you can also view Colony as a sci-fi fable in which the miners and colonists are the representations of two mutually-exclusive sets of principles. Genesis gets away with it a lot more though for having much better defined characters that aren’t fringe-stereotypes of the hippies and capitalists that Malcolm Hulke knew then.
basically exactly the same plot as Avatar – and Earth 2 (remember that? US series from the 90s with Tim Curry in the Roy Skelton role. Same plot, characters, designs…)
‘This story is my bête noire. ‘
It’s almost entirely beige, actually – this is the major problem I have with it, the relentless, merciless brownness of it all.
It actually seems more colourless than ‘The Mind of Evil’.
The colour on the DVD is actually a major improvement over the VHS, though!
Well, if you can’t take the quarry, stay out of the 70s…
The thing that has always worried me about this story is the whole premise that this is a group attempting colonise a planet. Their major fault, so it seems to me, is that they didn’t think too much about the mix of people needed to start colonise anywhere. Yes, you can plant crops and hope that they grow to give you some kind of future, but you also need to have the right mix of people to ensure that the colony will continue into the future. I’m talking procreation, folks! Having only one female colonist seems wrong. Either the colony is doomed before it’s started or Gail from “Coronation Street” is going to be a very busy (and presumably popular) lady!
I try not to think about the genetic problems this will cause for future generations…
There’s at least three women there, one of whom is killed with her husband at the start, another is played by the same person who plays Nancy, one of the Nuthutch people in Green Death, as well as Mary Ashe. There are probably meant to be more, the implications seems to be that the colony is made up of married couples.
I only ever remember Gail!
But I’m not going to let anything like facts get in the way of my warped theories…
Quite right too.
I look forward to Matt Smith visiting Planet of the Webfooted Earnest Chipmunk/Walnut People. With Golf Carts. In Taupovision.
I actually liked this episode. I thought the story was okay. I even liked it that the Master was the Adjudicator… though The Timelords shouldn’t have mentioned the Master at the start of episode 1; it would have worked better as a kind of surprise.
Best Sue remark was:
Sue: Why are the colonists so determined to stay here on this shit hole? It’s not exactly Barbados, is it? Or that lovely planet in Avatar. They can’t even get their crops to grow there. I’d have left this dump ages ago.
I couldn’t quite understand that either. WHY would they go to this shithole of a planet in the first place? Oh well….
I liked those weird green Maori guys with the spears. Primitives? I suppose. But they were good, and I liked it that you couldn’t trust them, made the story interesting.
The Doctor/Master relationship developed a bit more here. I like what the Doctor tells the Master when he turns him down:
“I want to see the universe, not rule it.”
That’s a great line.
Oh, and TARDIS Key played a part. I liked the bit about the Master’s TARDIS, and the way it looks different every time we see it. Yes, obviously it’s the same as the Doctor’s TARDIS inside (too expensive to maintain two sets), but still, I like the stories that have other TARDIS’ in them… I liked the bit with the gas.
Oh, and the part where the colonist’s spaceship blows up; I really thought most of them died for awhile. That was quite good. Would have been a bit too dark I suppose if they really had died. (But they did kill off the indigent population with that bomb, I’m fairly certain. Now I know why I don’t want extra-terrestrials to visit earth!
).
I’d give it a 8. I liked it. The walnut baby leader was absurd, but I pretend I didn’t notice that.
“This looks exactly like the Doctor’s TARDIS. Do they make them out of Gallifreyan flatpacks?” Please can Sue have her own TV series? PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Hello from the US!
I have been watching the entire series myself, and at some point came across your site and started reading each entry after watching the story. I’ve been meaning to leave a comment to let you guys know how much I enjoy your banter and commentary for a while.
While watching Colony in Space, I thought “Look the Master runs like a girl! Heh, I’ll bet Sue noticed that.” Of course I was thrilled to see she had, and I knew this was the time to say hi. So thanks to you and yours for sharing.