Review by Guy Clapperton
Stars Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson, Jeff Rawle | Written by Christopher Bidmead
UK certification PG | UK RRP £19.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 100 minutes | Directed by Ron Jones
A force pulls the TARDIS off course and it lands far in the future, beyond where the Time Lords’ influence is supposed to run. It finds a besieged colony of the last of the human race, under attack from meteorite showers. The TARDIS breaks up. And on the colony bodies are going missing...
There’s a lot to like in this story from the Fifth Doctor’s final season. Let’s focus on that first. There’s the Doctor himself. In the year this one went out, Davison finally hit his stride after a hesitant beginning a couple of years previously. He dominates scenes like he hadn’t done before, he uses those professorial half-moon glasses, he’s completely on form. Only in his final story, The Caves of Androzani, would he be any better.
There’s the first hint of a back story for the mysterious companion/former villain Turlough. There’s some sparkling dialogue between the Doctor and the main villain - the last episode in particular is a joy. There’s the lovely turning point when you realise that your sense of menace has been completely misdirected, and the conceit of basing the monsters - called Tractators - on woodlice is original.
It’s here that the cracks start to show, though. Writer and former script editor Christopher H. Bidmead confirms in the documentary that he asked too much of the production, they could never afford to make those monsters convincing. It’s one of those stories in which you have already to have bought into the idea of Doctor Who for it to work, otherwise they’re a bunch of people in ludicrous rubber costumes and that’s about it. Most of the tractators are played by dancers which, given the immobility of the costumes, was pretty much a waste of time.
There are a lot of polystyrene rocks as Bidmead’s ambition - which one applauds - overtakes what was actually possible on screen. Plotting, though, is reassuringly clear; Bidmead’s previous stories (Logopolis and Castrovala) had been cerebral, concept-laden tales which appealed mostly to the sci-fi buffs rather than the programme’s target family viewers. This one is a much more traditional monster story, even down to the gobby alien who insists on spilling the entire plot to the Doctor. It’s good to see this happening as a result of the Doctor reading the alien’s character and teasing the details out of him - a literate touch from Bidmead that makes the show all the more watchable.
There’s the odd point that isn’t clear or doesn’t work. The ground eating the people is a nice idea but you can’t quite see what’s supposed to be happening. Peter Gilmore looks as if he’s taken an off-the-shelf angry sergeant major character and sadly fails completely to bring it to life. There’s a scene in which one of the tractators grabs the character played by William Lucas and a couple of scenes later just kind of drops him - a story this packed shouldn’t have needed this sort of padding. And this is the first and last time we hear that there are limits to where Time Lords are allowed to go - surely the whole basis of the series neyond 1969 was that the Doctor wasn’t supposed to be interfering anywhere?
I like this story and remember it fondly from its first transmission. It packs a lot in and if the pace isn’t what it would be today (my daughter finds it unwatchable and she’s a big Doctor Who fan) then there’s no reason anyone in 1984 would have been concerned by the likely reaction in 2011. It’s just a shame that the concepts and the budget/logistics couldn’t have been a little better matched.
EXTRAS ★★ Uncharacteristically few - there’s a “making of” which is very good indeed, some PDF materials, extended and deleted scenes and some decent commentary from Peter Davison and others. It’s surprising that the producers can get so much info and reaction from older stories and so little for this.