You never forget your first time…
I decide to toy with Sue a little. While she’s busy in the kitchen, I cue up the edit of Episode Two that includes the notorious Delaware theme arrangement.
Sue: I’m actually looking forward to this one. Now that the Doctor has a fully working TARDIS, it should be a completely different show. Did they get a bigger budget for this season?
I press ‘Play’…
Sue: They’ve changed the music – (pause) – They’ve changed the music and it’s ****ing terrible! What have they done?
She looks genuinely distressed, so I press ‘Stop’.
Me: Don’t worry. They wanted to change the music, but when Barry Letts was presented with that abomination, he had exactly the same reaction as you. However, episodes with that arrangement were sent to Australia by mistake.
Sue: The poor bastards. It was horrendous – like a really bad cover version. And since there’s nothing wrong with the original, why even bother?
Episode One
Normal service is resumed…
Sue: Ah, that’s better. Oh, Robert Holmes! We like Robert Holmes. This could be a good one.
Me: This is a very important story for me. Not only was it my first exposure to Doctor Who, it also forms part of my earliest – and most vivid – childhood memory. I can still see the room as if it were yesterday. I can remember one scene in particular…
Sue: Really? No, wait, don’t tell me. Let me see if I can spot it when the time comes. Hang on – Ingrid Pitt’s not in this one, is she?
The story begins at a spaceport on Inter Minor…
Sue: It’s like the conveyor belt from The Generation Game.
Me: It’s supposed to be a baggage carousel.
Sue: Is it Christmas? Everyone’s luggage has been wrapped like it’s a present.
As grey functionaries beaver around the baggage area, Sue decides to surprise me.
Sue: I love their costumes. Their leggings are really nice.
Me: But their masks… Don’t you think their masks look terrible?
Sue: Of course their masks look terrible. That goes without saying.
The TARDIS arrives in the hold of a cargo ship.
Sue: Oh, good, I’m guaranteed some decent carpentry at last. I was beginning to worry.
Unfortunately, before she can check out the quality of SS Bernice’s timber, we have returned to Inter Minor, just in time to witness new arrival Shirna climbing out of her spacesuit.
Sue: So, is this your earliest childhood memory?
Me: Hardly! I was only three.
Sue: Lady Ga-Ga would kill for a look like hers. She’s way ahead of her time.
Meanwhile, back on the ship, the Doctor is convinced that they have arrived in the Acteon galaxy. They can’t be anywhere near Earth, he insists.
Sue: There’s a crate over there with ‘Bombay’ stamped all over it.
But instead of using his eyes, the Doctor decides to converse with some chickens instead.
Sue: For pity’s sake, look at the ****ing crate!
Jo finally cottons on…
Sue: At last! The Doctor isn’t exactly Sherlock Holmes, is he?
But the Doctor still isn’t convinced. Jo – and Sue – are adamant that the Doctor must be lost.
Sue: Does his bloody TARDIS work or not? What was the point if it still doesn’t work?
Nicol walked in during this exchange, and she decided to interject:
Nicol: The Doctor doesn’t steer the TARDIS, the TARDIS steers the Doctor. Remember? Matt Smith? Female TARDIS? Neil crying?
Sue: Oh, yeah. Good point. I’d forgotten about that.
Me: You’re not supposed to know that yet! Oh, I give up.
Nicol and Sue then get involved in a very long discussion about Jo Grant’s choice of clothing. They both adore her jacket and top. They’re not so sure about her trousers. They can’t tell if she’s wearing her socks pulled-up over her boots or not, and it’s driving them both crazy. And then Nicol leaves, to swot up on anti-matter universes no doubt, but not before she notices a character wearing a fez.
Nicol: Fezzes are cool.
Sue: I can hear somebody typing…
Me: That’s just Dudley Simpson’s music.
The Doctor and Jo explore the ship. When they are interrupted by some passengers, they hide behind some furniture. When Major Daly falls asleep, the Doctor and Jo emerge from their hiding place to debate their whereabouts.
Sue: Why are you having this conversation over the body of a sleeping man? Go somewhere else!
Suddenly, a plesiosaur attacks the ship!
Sue: Ooh, is that the Loch Ness Monster?
Me: If it is, it’s lost.
The Doctor and Jo are locked up as stowaways. Luckily, Jo has some skeleton keys on her person, and they escape. As they make their way through the ship, they witness the passengers and crew repeating their actions on a loop.
Sue: It’s Groundhog Day. Or Dinosaur Day, if you like. I knew something funny was going on.
Me: No you didn’t! You thought the Doctor was just being a prat again!
Sue: Is the dinosaur your first childhood memory?
Me: God, no.
For most people, a dinosaur attacking a ship would be good enough reason for a cliffhanger. But not for Robert Holmes. He decides to up the ante with a godlike hand reaching down to pick up the TARDIS.
Sue: I used to love Land of the Giants! I could just watch an episode of that now.
Me: I have the boxset if you -
Sue: If only I didn’t have to wash my hair. Oh, was the giant hand your first childhood memory? That would have freaked me out.
Me: No. Look, I’ll let you know when we get there, OK? You’re driving me insane, now, love.
Sue: I bet it’s something really obscure, like a close-up of a ladder, or something stupid like that.
As the end credits roll, Sue takes stock of what she’s seen so far:
Sue: It’s a very interesting set-up. I’m definitely intrigued. Robert Holmes certainly knows what he’s doing.
Episode Two
Sue: The nails on that man’s hand are filthy! That’s disgraceful.
That detail aside, Sue really enjoyed the moment when the two stories finally intertwined, you could practically hear the pennies dropping all around her.
Sue: Oh, I see! It’s like Big Brother. But in a box. That’s clever.
Vorg, the owner of the miniscope, decides to agitate his specimens, and the Doctor becomes embroiled in a boxing match with Andrews. It ends quickly, with the Doctor victorious.
Sue: He must have cheated. I bet he stuck his finger on the other bloke’s chest when no one was looking.
The Doctor and Jo escape from the SS Bernice to the interior of the miniscope.
Sue: This feels like a big change in style to me. The colours. The location. The ideas. It just feels different. It’s as if Jon Pertwee is finally getting to be the Doctor he’s always wanted to be. He’s quite good this week, actually, although I still hate him when he patronises Jo.
Thankfully, this is offset by endless comedic banter between Pletrac, Kalik and Orum.
Sue: The script is very funny. Robert Holmes is in a different league. I really love these characters.
Me: That’s Packer over there.
Sue: Is it really? Oh, yes, so it is. I love Packer.
From this point on, Sue doesn’t say a great deal. This is always a good sign.
Sue: The direction is really good. Who is it? It isn’t -
Me: It’s Barry Letts.
Sue: I didn’t know he was a director as well.
Me: He was a writer, a director, a producer, and even an actor at one stage. There was no end to Barry’s talents.
Sue: (Impersonating Terrance Dicks, badly) “Barry said to me…”
Me: Stop that. You don’t even know who you’re impersonating.
Sue: Yes, I do. It’s Ian Levine, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, back at the Carnival of Monsters, Vorg checks on his miniscope after the locals’ attempts at obliterating it with a giant gun fail dismally. He turns a knob and we see a very familiar face:
Sue: It’s the Cybermen! I knew they were behind this!
Me: No you didn’t.
Sue: They haven’t been in it for ages. And you can’t be the Doctor without facing the Cybermen. It’s probably a law or something.
Sue loves the sets – both the interior of the ship and the miniscope – and when Pertwee says, “All these shafts look the same”, Sue gets all nostalgic.
Sue: It’s the 1960s all over again. Yeah, he’s definitely the Doctor now. The only thing I can’t stand about this story is the way Robert Holmes writes Jo. She is far too dizzy and ditzy this week. She’s not that thick. She’s acting like a 12 year-old child.
And then we reach a very special moment. For me, at least.
Me: Well, this is it.
Sue: Is this the bit where they reveal all the Cybermen?
Me: No. This is my earliest childhood memory.
Sue: It’s just a swamp.
And then a Drashig rears its ugly head…
Sue: Oh, OK. (pause) Well, that wasn’t very phallic, was it?
Me: And that was it – I was hooked on Doctor Who from that point on. I have memories of practically every story from here on out.
Sue: You are probably just remembering all the other times you’ve seen them, as repeats, or on video.
Me: No, it’s not the plots I remember, or anything like that. It’s feelings. And places. Smells, even. It’s usually a snapshot image of a time and place, all brought into sharp focus by a scene from this show. In this instance, I’m in my first home, and my auntie (who lived in New Zealand, and so must have been visiting my mother) was in the room with me. She was almost certainly babysitting as I would have been three years old. The chair that I was sitting on had black and white stripes running over it. There was a gas fire to the left of me, and I am drinking something orange. I think I had a Farley’s rusk, too, but I can’t be sure.
Sue: Were you scared?
Me: I think I wet myself.
Sue: Charming.
Me: I’ll be sure to bore you with more of these memories as we go on.
Episode Three
Sue: Pertwee is really selling this scene. He looks defeated.
Me: What do you make of the Drashigs?
Sue: They look great. Very scary. Like giant evil caterpillars. Oh look, two of them are having a snog.
Our heroes run away from the monsters, but Jo gets stuck in the mud.
Sue: Now we know why she’s wearing boots. Handy, that. This is a great scene, though. The direction is especially good. I love it when we go outside. Even if it is a bleak shit-hole in the middle of nowhere.
Vorg protests his innocence to the Inter Minor authorities, as all hell breaks loose inside his machine.
Sue: You can see how this character must have been a big influence on the likes of Timmy Mallet. This actor would have been a good Doctor, actually. He’d have to change his costume first, though.
As the Inter Minor officials continue to bicker and point-score off each other, Sue is laughing out loud.
Sue: This feels like Yes, Minister in space. It’s very funny and it’s helped by the fact they’ve got three very good actors to play these parts. I could watch this all day.
Back inside the machine, the Doctor explains the history of the miniscope to Jo.
Sue: Jo needs to calm down a bit. Take a deep breath, love. Why is she playing it so young this week? She’s never usually this bad.
When there is a lull in the action, I ask her what she makes of the actor playing Andrews.
Sue: He’s OK, I guess. Nothing special. He looks like Michael Schumacher. Will that do?
The Drashigs break out their environment and one of them manages to invade the SS Bernice.
Sue: The special effects are great. The CSO is working really well for Barry. Didn’t you tell me once that he was a pioneer of this technique? I bet Barry would have loved CGI.
General Daly repels a Drashig with his machine gun, and then it’s back to the bar as if nothing had ever happened.
Sue: They are like dogs. I read somewhere that dogs only remember the last 10 minutes of their lives. This is what it must be like to be Buffy.
The episode concludes with the Doctor escaping from the infernal machine.
Sue: He could have waited for Jo.
Episode Four
The Doctor returns to his normal size and Pletrac goes on a rant about unclean immigrants.
Sue: It’s Planet of the Daily Mail Readers.
The Doctor volunteers to go back into the miniscope to save Vorg’s collection.
Sue: Does that mean he’ll have to go in there and save that Cyberman we saw earlier? And the Orc? That could be very interesting.
And then Sue stops talking again.
Me: You’re not saying very much, love.
Sue: Shut up. I’m trying to listen to the dialogue. We don’t get dialogue as good as this, usually. I don’t want to miss anything.
The Doctor continues to fret over Jo’s safety.
Sue: Why doesn’t he stick his hand into the machine and pick Jo up by her collar? It’s big enough.
Me: He’ll be bitten by Drashigs.
Sue: They are tiny! Put a pair of gloves on, you wimp.
Everyone is worried that the Drashigs will escape from the miniscope and wreak havoc on the city.
Sue: Just stamp on them when they come out of the machine. They’re tiny! It will just be like standing on a normal caterpillar. You don’t need a giant laser gun for that.
The Doctor returns to the miniscope’s interior and he quickly rescues Jo, but when they return to the exit, they are overcome by heat and exhaustion. The Doctor faints.
Sue: Ouch! Pertwee just landed on his nose. That must have hurt.
The Doctor saves the day, the only way he knows how.
Sue: He’s reversed something again. It’s the only trick he knows. Oh, look, that lid is clearly made from cardboard. The money ran out in the end.
As the episode wraps up, I am struck by a sudden thought…
Me: I’ve just remembered something. Not only was Carnival of Monsters the first Doctor Who story I ever saw, it was also the first story that provoked me into posting something on the internet. In fact, my opinion of Carnival of Monsters was probably the first thing I ever published online. Hang on a minute -
I conduct a quick online search, and then I find it – my first post to the Usenet group rec.arts.drwho.
Me: Here it is – March 31st, 1995. I would have posted it from the old university language lab that we used to sneak into. I remember now. I’d just been in a Telnet chatroom and I’d barged into a conversation that two people were having about Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. They told me to visit to rec.arts.drwho if I felt the urge to talk about Doctor Who. I felt like a right tit.
Sue: OK, you’ve lost me now.
Me: Anyway, my very first post was about Carnival of Monsters.
Sue: What did you say?
Me: Here are the edited highlights: “Is it just me or are the Functionaries from Carnival of Monsters the worst example of make-up in the entire history of the series?”
Sue: That’s a nice, positive start.
Me: “I nearly fell off my chair in shock when they first shambled onto the set. Bits of latex flapping around like no one’s business. And it wasn’t just one of them – all of them were flapping about! It was unbelievable!”
Sue: I thought you were supposed to be a fan? Why didn’t your first internet post talk about your love for the programme?
Me: It gets worse: “Was no effort made at all? Was all the money spent on the pleis…plies.. the dinosaur? Did Angela Seyfang (the make-up artist, and I use the term loosely) ever work again?”
Sue: That’s a bit harsh.
Me: “And as for Jon Pertwee. Does anyone know how many times in the series he rubbed the back of his neck and looked baffled?”
Sue: How many replies did you get?
Me: None.
Sue: I can’t say I’m surprised. You sound like a troll.
The Final Score
Sue: Very good. Very good, indeed. It just proves what you can do in four parts with a good writer, a good director and a good cast. That isn’t too much to ask for, is it? I can’t complain about that one at all. The only negative thing I have to say about it, is that Jo was written like a child. She needs to toughen up a bit. Some of the make-up was a bit dodgy, too – although I wouldn’t go on the internet to complain about it. But, on the whole, it was great.
9/10
Next week is Anniversary Week for Adventures with the Wife in Space! Not only did we begin the experiment a year ago next week, we will also reach the halfway point in the experiment next week as well. Happy times and places.
The experiment continues…
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Wow! Sue actually agreed with fan opinions (well, unless it’s all changed behind my back and we’re now supposed to Hate Carnival.) for once. Carnival is one of my absolute favourite stories and definitely in my top 3 Pertwees, it’s just such a corker. Great ideas, good writing, and just fun.
And I like this bit, for some reason:
“They look great. Very scary. Like giant evil caterpillars. Oh look, two of them are having a snog.”
CoM sure is a grower. Wonderful ideas, witty dialogue, interesting characters. What more could you want? Better make-up and FX, surely?
Oh good – I couldn’t sleep properly either.
This is the one Pertwee story that’s guaranteed to improve with age – yours as well as the programme’s. Post-modern long before the term was run into the ground by pompous media twats, it’s exactly as clever as it believes it is in the same way that, for example, Gridlock isn’t. You can come back to it again, even twenty or thirty years later (as so many fans did), and always find new levels and delightful levels to appreciate that went underneath your personal radar in 1973 or 1981.
On first viewing I thought this episode was bad in every way. I hated the costumes, the circus people, and drashigs had to be the dumbest most impotent monsters ever. Years later I rewatched it for lack of absolutely anything better to do and found it much improved. I dont recall it as 9 good, Ill have to watch it again. But I do like how our views change and we see new things in our old episodes.
I do long for some Daleks and Cybermen though.
I must confess the same reaction: I wasn’t sure about this one at first but loved “The Three Doctors” on first broadcast (1975 in NZ). Nowadays I find my appreciation of each is reversed. Funny how fickle we all are, isn’t it?
Yeah… I’d like to have seen the Pert meet the Cybermen. I think the Bobi Bartlett version (“The Invasion”) would have suited the UNIT era. Still, I suppose it had already been done in 1968. I don’t know how they have worked for him on another planet – although wasn’t “Revenge of the Cybermen” orignally pitched as a Pertwee story?
Anyway – I digress. I love “Carnival…” – glad Sue did too.
T-shirt? I can’t get past Nicol’s: “Fezzes are cool.” Nice foreshadowing…
Try this for this next story. Have a drinking game to see how many times the Doctor and/or Jo get locked up.
A better drinking game would be to have the Skol ready for each release, then race to see how much you can chug down before the next time they’re banged up again.
I don’t know about him as the Doctor but Vorg ended up in Hi De Hi as the grumpy children’s entertainer/punch & judy man
I’ll get my coat….
I’m surprised Sue didn’t notice that actually, or his assistant played by Citizen Smith’s girlfriend – she’s usually good at spotting actors from 70s sitcoms. Of course they do look considerably different here…
Some snigger moments here: Look at the ****ing crate!; Is that the Loch Ness Monster?; Every Dr has to meet the Cybermen… Not sure it’s fair to expect Sue to recognise Ian Marter, though.
Another cracking outing from Michael Wisher – who surely must have the most guest credits, even pre-you-know-who?
No reaction to the parlari? The Doctor speaks every language in the universe, including chicken (or for the reboot era, the TARDIS translates everything). Yet he can’t understand carny/gay slang (or the TARDIS databank doesn’t include Round the Horne)…
No?
Hula, can you grab my coat while you’re there…
If they were to remake this story today, that would of course be the heavily-signposted joke.
I was waiting for Neil to tease Sue about that Andrews bloke being a near-miss for casting as Captain Yates!
Good stuff – both story and your commentary.
Sue (laudably) wanting to be quiet and listen to the excellent dialogue is why I don’t think you should do a video commentary on a ‘good’ story, especially such a witty gem as 5H. Instead I feel it would be better to use a more visual ambitious story, especially a dodgy one. You’ve a fair selection…
Yes, but next week you’ll be watching the last — *runs off, sobbing*
I love CoM. It was the highlight of “The Five Faces of Doctor Who” for me, in a repeat series that was practically all highlights. My earliest memories are of “Death to the Daleks”, so the only way I had experienced the first three stories was by way of DWM (or indeed DWW) and the target novelisations…that was up until this repeat season. So I’m glad that Sue loved this story too. The only problem with her loving a story is that there are less candidates for possible t-shirts. My only suggestion would be “Planet of the Daily Mail Readers”…but I’m not sure I would wear such a t-shirt!
‘Charlie Brooker’s Daily Mail Planet’.
Lovely article about one of my favourites – I’m glad Sue scored it so highly.
I can forgive Paddy Kingsland and his electric guitar *anything* for his sublime scores to Logopolis and Castrovalva; I’ll even pretend the ‘Jew’s harp in a dustbin’ setting on his old Casio never happened. He’s probably more embarrassed at his music turning up in Spongebob Squarepants.
Sue’s reaction to the Jew’s harp makes me intrigued as to how she will react when we get to 1980, and especially ’86 and ’87…
1980 is interesting – I loathed it at the time, but get nostalgic for it now. Even though I objected to the visual design shift from vortex to stars, I was fine with visual revamps (Pertwee colour howl, Pertwee slit-screen, Baker slit-screen), but substantially changing the music felt like vandalism.
Interesting experiment for Neil. Why not mock up a version of Leisure Hive ep 1 with the previous title sequence (I think there are some blanks floating around) and see how much of a stylistic shift Sue perceives within the body of the programme. Then play ep 2 as is, and compare reactions. Then prepare footrub, oils and scented candles to atone for the guinea pig treatment…
Whoops. We’ve got ahead of ourselves again.
As a mere whippersnapper of 32, the Howell theme, in conjunction with the Davison title sequence, is the one that gets my nostalgic juices flowing. Much as I still love it though, I have to admit that I prefer the original these days!
“Why doesn’t he stick his hand into the machine and pick Jo up by her collar? It’s big enough.”
The definite pick of the quotes for me this time. Intriguing also that Sue compares the Drashigs to dogs, given the use of canine skulls in the making of the Drashig models…
This is probably the best Pertwee story outside of Season 7, and the moment when Robert Holmes fully found his voice – the Auton stories showed him to be a talented writer, but Carnival takes things to a new, imaginatively rich level that still seems fresh and startling today. There are only two criticisms I would make. Like Sue, I think Jo doesn’t come over too well in this one, as she is written as more childlike and whiny than usual, and it also seems to me that the distinctly amoral Vorg is let off the hook too readily by the Doctor. He seems completely indifferent for most of the story to the cruelty of the Miniscope, and while I suppose he does come good in the end, he would have been a worthy recipient of one of the third Doctor’s pompous moralising lectures.
Is it really a year since the experiment began? The time has certainly flown by, though I hope it doesn’t slow down for you too much as you endure the tedium of the next story. It is surely a candidate for the Most Boring Ever prize, but I won’t be at all surprised if Sue disagrees…
Actually, Barry Letts liked the Delaware theme – but was the only person who did, so he was persuaded to drop it.
IIRC he still couldn’t tell what was wrong with it, years later!
As hideously dated as the Delaware theme sounds to our ears now, it would have been much harder in ’72 – when synth composers were producing their own fresh brand of experimental wobbly noises – to put your finger on *why* the Delaware theme seemed wrong, even then. It’s because the earlier Radiophonics output was based around real sounds, and the original theme is startling and alien because however much you abuse and rerecord the tape to the point of distortion, the qualities that make it ‘real’ – the instrumental attack time and low resonating frequencies – are still there. Introduce early tone generation and digital waveforms into the equation, and those properties are suddenly gone. It’s why Malcolm’s Clarke’s Sea Devils score is his most avant-garde, but otherwise pure 1972; his most popular score, for Earthshock, isn’t exactly ‘conventional’ either but all the clangs and bangs help to root it back into the real world in the same way that Paddy’s electric guitar does.
An interesting thought: if they’d tried changing the theme in 1969 between seasons six and seven, the obvious way would have been to create and record some new wobbly noises based on processed real instruments, and use a Mellotron to play them back. That method, used at that time, would have likely been the only possible point where you could have feasibly got away with changing the theme with a keyboard, before 1980.
Personally I’d have liked to have seen the reaction if Ron Grainer’s own 45 rpm single version – the “disco” arrangement that wasn’t Mankind’s – had been used. I mean, it’s more authentically Ron Grainer’s vision than Delia Derbyshire’s or Brian Hodgson’s could be.
I found it interesting that Earthshock’s emotive clanging motif (processed orchestral bells, I reckon) – the sound you’d expect if you swung a crowbar at a cyberman – coincides with the time when when the monsters are visually at their least metallic since Tenth Planet. Combined with the relentless bass quelchy metronic marching figure, this is inspired arrangement.
I used to get told off for scraping the piano strings with a key…
Doesn’t Barry tell a story on his memoirs CD of not liking the theme and feeling bad about telling Delia and Peter only to discover to his relief they didn’t really like it either? Or am I misremembering the story?
Ahhh RADW. Those were the (bad) days!
Have you been to RADW recently? The bad old days never went away
The drashigs, in the Five Faces repeat, is one of my earliest and scariest memories, and I actually think they still look reasonably well done. And the “Twenty times round the deck” line stuck with me down the years too, from when I was about 6.
I’m surprised this story is so popular since with hindsight it’s the one where Robert Holmes starts getting lazy with his writing.
It takes a lot of work to make viewers suspend their disbelief and accept an imaginary planet in an imaginary galaxy as a real setting. To do that you need to get everything else as detailed and believable as possible, including the characters. But here Holmes makes the alien characters all just stereotypes.
He could get away with that on earthbound stories, but here it just makes it even harder than usual to accept the reality of the space setting. As a result, I’ve never been able to get into this story and would only give it a 5/10.
Real-life beaurocrats are their *own* stereotype, by both definition and example. That’s why the fans love this one so much.
“This actor would have been a good Doctor, actually. He’d have to change his costume first, though.” – I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Sue’s going to *hate* Colin Baker, isn’t she?
Just as a nitpick, “laser” is spelt with an “s”, not a “z”. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Sorry, my dad’s a laser research scientist, so “lazer” always niggles me.
The Colin Baker period always reminded me of late Pertwee, for the wrong reasons. It’ll be telling whether Sue lays the blame directly at Baker’s door, or if she recognizes that the shitty scripts, garish design and Baker’s own bombast are all having to fight for the attention stolen from them by that bloody costume. The only people who ever made that sort of visual approach work were John Ridgeway with the Sixth Doctor comics, and Dave Gibbons with the Fourth.
In college I had an astrophysics professor whose last name was Layzer.
That’s nothing, the future leader of the human race is called Layzar.
I will be mightily amused if Sue surprises everyone by adoring the Colin Baker years.
If she doesn’t, it’s going to be a long old slog, because I can’t imagine her mood improving with the McCoy years. If she’s anything like me (and so far we have fairly similar tastes, except in carpentry), she’ll find Revelation Of The Daleks a pleasant blip in an otherwise rather tawdry wilderness.
I find the Colin Baker era such a shame, as it’s a fantastic idea – what if the Doctor went mad and had trouble controlling himself? It’s just a shame that the scripts were never coherent enough to really explore that idea. I love Baker, and I like a lot of the stories, but there’s just so much wasted *potential*.
I always think that the best glimpse of what could have been done with the character is Joseph Lidster’s short story “Trapped!” from Short Trips: Monsters.
Ive come to really enjoy Colin’s run at Big Finish. The stories are so much better… and much as I liked McCoy himself, his Big Finish stories are worlds better than almost all he got on tv.
Lazer? No-one mention “Megga-volts”!
and I’m sure TOmb of the Cybermen novelisation referred to a “digital vault meter”
Still looking for my coat, sorry…
T-shirt of the week:
“Sue: I can hear somebody typing…
Me: That’s just Dudley Simpson’s music.”
I have no recollection of that r.a.dw post from March 1995. I’m surprised I didn’t leap in to explain how much I (used to) hate this story. Again as with most middle-stage Pertwee, I thought the novelization was far better… of course that was before I became a Peter Halliday devotee.
I have such happy memories of this story from The Five Faces of Doctor Who repeats. All of those repeated stories seemed so much more fun and colourful (even the B/W ones!) to this 9 year old than that final Tom Baker season that had just finished on TV.
In hindsight it’s still a great script and a very clever idea, but the sets and costumes on Inter Minor are all utterly rubbish. Some of the worst ever! Such a shame as even plodders like The Sensorites and The Space Pirates looked better than this!
Anyway, you finally convinced me! I’ve followed you fabulous people since episode one and loved the journey. So whilst I’ve been stalling for months you have finally convinced me and I followed your link and bought Revisitations 2. I just hope it helps a little bit towards financing you through the next few hundred episodes. :O)
Best of luck to you both,
Dave x
Spot on! I’ve always loved this story and I’m glad Sue liked it so much. Hope you watched the DVD, the picture is so much better than the old prints.
T-shirts: “Well, that wasn’t very phallic, was it?” and “You sound like a troll”
This is the most creatively written story for Pertwee’s Doctor so far. It’s just so damn clever, there were so many ideas bandied about in this; I was just amazed. Pertwee isn’t my favorite Doctor, but his adventures are just amazing. And this story was just brilliant.
The first couple of episodes were a bit weird. When I was watching it, I kept getting interrupted by people in the house, so I’d stop the video, turn it back on later and I kept seeing the same repetitive stuff with the people on the ship walking around the deck, and Jo and the Doctor getting told they were stowaways, etc. I noticed that it was happening over and over; I kept thinking that the copy I’d been watching had been spliced into a repetitive loop; like a time loop… then it dawned on me that it was the Doctor Who version of Groundhog Day. I loved it that those numpties didn’t have any short-term memory (or long term, for that matter. Just relieving everything every 30 minutes). Those two stories: (1) with the Blue Three Stooges and the Magician and his assistant on another planet in one part, and (2) the High Brow people on the ship going to Bangkok with the dinosaur in the second part didn’t seem to be connected. But when it all came together, it was incredibly clever story exposition.
Loved Pertwee falling out of the miniscope as an action figure and then growing into his full length… that was just amazing and very well done. And those weird godzilla-like monster Drashigs were pretty cheesy but it didn’t seem to matter. Must of scared the little kids when they saw this the first time. I loved the whole idea of the miniscope holding all those different people/species in it like some kind of miniature zoo; reminded me a bit of the Teselecta in Let’s Kill Hilter, with the tiny people and the miniaturization ray. And there was a Cyberman in there, and the Daleks got a mention. There was even an Ogron… I was glad it was only for a cameo (I don’t particularly care for the Ogrons)!
Only comment was that Jo played the helpless damsel in distress a bit too much. She’s usually got more of a backbone.
Exceptionally well done! 9/10.
One thing always bothers me: when the Doctor and Jo first arrive, the Doctor knows all about the SS Berenice disappearing before it got to Shanghai (as famous as the Mary Celeste), but by the end of the adventure, all the inhabitants of the MiniScope have been returned. So either the Berenice sank before it arrived, OR there’s some huge temporal anomaly, OR Time lords can see all the variations in time that can happen at any one particular moment, and remember them………
Yeah, I thought about that too. The ship should have sunk. Well, at least the guy got to finish his novel, after reading the same few pages over and over again for probably years! And not remembering any of it! Or maybe they were from an alternative universe and in that one it disappeared but eventually showed up. One can only hope.
I just assumed the Doctor had previously visited a future timeline that was a “variant” (where the SS Bernice was never rescued from the ‘Scope) and that it got corrected by his actions here, restoring the ship in much the same way he restored the “non devastated” future-century Earth in “Day of the Daleks”.
Just got put onto this by my friend.
I was given Carnival by my friend whose doppleganger is David Tennant as a good luck present for me because I am doing a show at the Comedy Festival that he stars as 10 in. We have a Blink moment.
I love this episode and although I love 10 as a modern Doctor however my fave classic Doctor is my friends aswell – Jon Pertwee.
Also I have been thinking of doing the same as you. Watching it in order…. and maybe blogging.