…um, Susan who? It’s…
The Rescue
In which we meet
it…the Doctor’s new companion…
 |
| (The planet?) Dido, pictured yesterday... (I'm telling you now, if she sings "White Flag" I shall bloody well puke!) |
- hooray, at last we hear the proper “wheezing, groaning” as
the TARDIS comes in to land. We’ve heard it before, of course, but only when we experience
a materialisation from inside the control room.
- what the buggery have they forced Maureen O’Brien into
wearing? That top is just so lumpy and shapeless…it’s like a painter’s smock that
Nancy Kominsky would’ve worn in Paint
Along with Nancy (you'll have to have been a kid watching mid-afternoon television in the 70s to get this reference. She was an American "artist" who used to knock up a painting using only a palette knife in about twenty minutes to varying degrees of success. Needless to say, as a ten year old, I thought she was a real talent, however, looking back, I can now see that most of her efforts were just a tiny bit shit. Perhaps JNT had a point with his "rose-coloured spectacles" jibe after all). Perish the thought that, with her being female, she might
be seen to have boobs (Vicki that is, not Nancy). Her get up is clearly meant to suggest she’s much
younger than Susan, but it’s all so hideous. I mean those tights she wears are
so thick…they’re like sack-cloth. A girl in my primary school (I won’t name
names just in case) used to wear something very similar I seem to recall. I
remember she once weed herself while we were all standing around the
blackboard. One minute we were reciting the alphabet, the next we were
swimming like billio for the shallow end...while Mrs Bach ran out of the
classroom for a handful of paper towels and a mop. Bless!
 |
| Vicki did wish Bennett would stop asking her to give him a bed bath! She was pretty tired of soaping up his middle aged man bits with a manky old sponge. But he was so very insistent. |
- the crew of the rescue ship are a right bunch of miserable
old gits, aren’t they. There’s a poor orphaned girl stranded on an alien
planet, everyone else, apart from some bloke with bad skin and a habit of
locking himself away in his bedroom like a teenage boy who’s been given a copy
of a top shelf magazine by an older boy in the school playground, has been
murdered - supposedly by the indigenous population - and they can’t even be
arsed to spend a couple of minutes talking to her in a nice friendly reassuring
manner. The knobs.
- inside the TARDIS, and I see the salad spinner’s still
there!
- has Barbara borrowed the polo neck Ian wore in The Sensorites? So long as he’s not
wearing her pants, I suppose.
- the TARDIS light keeps flashing once its landed. I hope
there’re no epileptics watching. Also, there’s no back to it - when the door
opens you can see the rocky cave wall behind instead of the usual blackness. Typical!
They get the materialisation sound right for once, only to then go and lose
part of the bloody prop.
 |
| 'J-2, that's a miss'... Vicki's only release from the tedium of it all was to play battleships with a pretend friend over her CB radio. |
- Ian wonders what Susan might be doing now. Barbara
speculates that, if she knows David, he’ll have her milking cows. Personally,
I’ve a feeling she’ll be staked out on a mattress somewhere with her nightie
over her head as David has a go at boosting the Earth’s population.
- blimey! Barbara’s fallen off a cliff. Thank heavens her
wonderful Sixties hairdo doubles as a crash helmet, otherwise she could’ve done
herself a real mischief.
- Cockylickin’s pimped his spanner! It’s outrageously bling!
I bet he’s got the gayest toolbox on Dido...tinsel wrapped nutspinners,
decoupage on his expanding flat bits, glittery suction grippers, that sort of
thing. Apparently it’s a ‘ray used in construction work’ according to the
Doctor. Somehow I can’t see it being used on any building site on Earth, unless
it’s one that employs the construction worker from Village People.
 |
| Being cornered in a tight spot by a man waving an oddly shaped tool in her face took Barbara back to that incident down by the canal when she was in the sixth form... |
- one thing the show is absolutely terrible at is rock falls.
It can’t do them for toffee. In this instance it looks as though someone's
emptied a half empty sack of potatoes onto the studio floor.
- Koquillion’s head is shaped like a croissant!
- the ‘Dido people’ numbered about a hundred on the Doctor’s
last visit. That’s not nearly enough to ensure the survival of the species
(well, not without severe genetic abnormalities). It’s quite a respectable
number for a good game of bingo though.
 |
| I see Barbara's passed out after another bout of self- flagellation. She really needs to find herself a less harmful hobby...cake decorating for example. |
- this story is actually quite rude if you stop and think
about it. For a start the rescue ship coming for Vicki and Bennett is 69 hours
away. Then we see the Doctor waking up just after the TARDIS has landed feeling
‘a bit sticky’ - so, he was having one of those dreams was he! Also, Koquillion
is forever waving his large tool around, certainly Vicki is always flinching
from its awesome might (and I shan’t say anything about him being covered in
pricks…oh, I just have!) As the Doctor and Ian look for a way out through the
tunnels they find themselves on the edge of a chasm. Yes, another one - are we
sure Terry Nation didn’t have a hand in writing this script. ‘If I press myself any
harder against this thing I shall do myself an injury’ says the Doctor. Steady!
Then, in his search for a handhold, Ian grabs the nearest ring, which comes
away in his hand. Ouch! The Doctor discovers it’s been oiled. An oiled ring? It
gets more and more like a porn movie the further in we get - no wonder the
“Making Of” documentary on the DVD is entitled Mounting the Rescue. And of course, the planet is called Dildo…erm,
I mean Dido. I wonder if this is the universe’s only battery operated planet?
The Doctor does, it turns out, possess a large battery operated device in the ship -
although it turns out to be a torch. Oh, and Cockylickin? What is Ian thinking
of. Barbara paying him a visit in the middle of the night perhaps?
 |
| Oh no! When confronted by Koquillion a little bit of wee had just escaped. Vicki was going to have to wring out her tights again! |
- Sandy the Sand-Beast -
has front legs, but none at the back (he looks a bit like a really ugly mermaid).
Dragging his lower portions around on the gritty planetary surface must play
havoc with his genitals. No wonder he looks so bloody fierce. Unless they’re
located somewhere else on his body. I hope for his sake they are. In fact, now
I look at it, his nose is a somewhat suspicious shape. He’s also wearing
deeley-boppers, urgh - how Eighties. What next? Lycra cycling shorts and a lime
green headband?
 |
| The Doctor's and Ian's first "official" date together was going quite well. They were already at the holding hands stage...they'd be feeling each other's tits in the bus stop at the end of the evening at this rate. |
- some of the music is utterly bizarre and really quite
trippy. The piece that plays as Barbara lays the table while Vicki collects the
water and Sandy looks on from his cave feels as if it could’ve been written by Tangerine Dream in collusion with Jean
Michel Jarre one afternoon whilst lying around on beanbags smoking some good
quality weed.
- Vicki collects stones. Perhaps she’s subscribed to Precious Rocks, Gems and Minerals…you
know, that collectible partwork series from RBS
Colleccionables in which you put together an impressive assortment of such
items over 80 issues at a cost of an arm and a leg and which is bound to end up
either in the attic or a car boot sale a couple of years down the line. Obviously there
must be a well-stocked newsagents on Dido.
- the Doctor manages to persuade Vicki that Barbara’s not
Sylvester Stallone in a tweed skirt, and she forgives her ruthless act. ‘Just
be careful of the hand-grenades she keeps tucked away in her knickers’ I almost
expect him to add.
- Koquillion has as much of an eye for branding as the
Cybermen in The Tomb of the Cybermen - his face appears on walls, booby traps and a large circular coffee table
in the centre of the Peoples Hall of Judgement. Maybe he runs his own mail order
service? Wonder where I’d get a catalogue from?
- Bennett destroyed the whole Didonian race…or so he thinks.
But two members survived. Both of them males. Still, they look happy enough in
each other’s company. It's nice to know that even though their whole species might very well be utterly
doomed, at least these two chaps are going to have a whale of a time together as they sit
around waiting for extinction.
- Death-O-Meter: 75. Sandy, the Sand Beast - shot
at point blank range by Barbara with a flare pistol. The murdering, big haired
bitch. It’s the equivalent of walking into someone’s front room and strangling
their budgie, or bludgeoning the next door neighbour’s cat to death with a
shovel. If there were such a thing I’d be reporting her to the Didonian
equivalent of the RSPCA. The noise it makes as it dies is just heart-breaking
and quite, quite chilling - it sounds like a whale pleading to be let out of
the microwave. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at Barbara in the same
way again. Still, she’s sold into a life of slavery in the next story, so
that’s some consolation; 76. Bennett
- falls off a high ledge to his death after being shocked by the appearance of
two Didonians. Not that I’m surprised - what they’re wearing is hideous! (There’s an awful lot of falling off,
or almost falling off, things in this story. Barbara in Episode One takes the
shortest route down the mountainside [although thankfully she’s saved by a
big bush], Ian is almost pushed off a ledge by something sharp shooting out at
his goolies, while the Doctor comes dangerously close to falling off the same
parapet because…well, because he’s a doddery old fart. Then in Desperate
Housewives…erm…I mean Desperate Measures Bennett goes the
same way as Morbius (arse over tit over a cliff), and the last shot is the
TARDIS falling off a rocky outcrop. I don’t know about calling it The Rescue…The Lemmings would’ve been
far more appropriate.)
 |
| Bennett had once watched Deliverance and had a nasty suspicion at what might very well be coming next... |
- do they have a branch of JD Sports on Dido? I only ask because the Didonians appear to be
wearing track suit bottoms/shell suits.
- the Doctor’s dangerously close to coming across as being a
bit pervy in his one-to-one’s with Vicki. I know if some strange old man asked
me to accompany him inside a small blue box my initial impulse would be to kick
him in the nuts and run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.
- by the end of the story, Vicki’s tights are looking a
little baggy around the knees!
- Vicki - is clearly based
on Miranda from The Tempest. The
range of emotions Maureen O’Brien is called on to display as Vicki are vast -
it’s almost as if she’s auditioning for the part before our very eyes, showing
us exactly what she’s capable of and what she can offer the series in general.
One minute she’s strong and courageous, sticking out her chin as she determines
to prove she’s more than up to the challenge of living this castaway life
without any help from strangers, the next her resolve crumbles into
self-indulgent pity as all hope deserts her. Such extremes of attitude are very
childlike, which emphasises the fact she’s probably supposed to be a good two
or three years younger than the girl she’s replacing. It’s a lovely moment when
she shows Barbara the flare gun that will lead to her ultimate salvation - by showing
off the most important thing in her life to the nearest adult she’s letting
them in on her secret and allowing them a foothold into her world. However, by
the second episode, her emotions seem to be on a loop, and the anger she
displays at the interference of these outsiders becomes rather too self-pitying
and borderline annoying. From empathising with her in the first episode, by
about ten minutes into part two you just want to send her to bed without any
supper. All this does, however, hint at her backstory. It suggests she was
always well protected, cossetted even. Perhaps a bit of a loner. And now, here
she is having to stand on her own two feet for the very first time in her young
life. All these emotions are new to her and she’s not quite sure how to deal
with them, resulting in this terribly prim and proper girl who always thought
she knew her place suddenly finding herself close to a breakdown. To begin with
I found it quite annoying that Maureen O’Brien didn’t produce real tears when
the script called for her to cry, but thinking about it, it makes a lot of
sense - she can’t shed real tears because she just doesn’t have it in her
anymore.
Score on the
TARDIS Doors - 4 - does what it says
on the tin, but ultimately it’s all a bit uninspiring. It feels as though we’re
being forced into taking a break from all the excitement of the previous story
just so we can say hello to Susan’s replacement.
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