…mine’s a pint, and a small sweet sherry for the little
lady please, it’s…
Galaxy 4
In which twice an
episode a Chumbley enters from the left, wobbles across the screen twittering
like an old lady in a retirement home, extends a probe, emits a high-pitched noise that would worry sheep, does nothing for about
five minutes and then exits screen right; while a load of middle-aged boilers
stand around waiting for a big bang…
- is Vicki now running her own mobile hairdressing business
from the TARDIS? It’s a nice little domestic touch, having her give Steven a (not so) short back and
sides (I certainly can’t tell the difference between before and after). He might’ve had a shave and a
bit of a wash and brush up at the beginning of The Time Meddler, but we have to remember he’s still adjusting,
both physically and mentally, to his new found freedom. How fortunate for him
then that their very next stop should effectively be a planet of bottle
blonde Amazonians. As you might expect, as soon as they enter the Drahvin ship
he appears to start thinking with his cock ‘...aren't they a lovely surprise’ he
exclaims. Depends on how many pints you've had, love.
 |
| The Doctor pondered if it was worth offering to make Maaga a cup of cocoa, after all, it had worked wonders on Cameca... |
- I thought the inside of the TARDIS was in a different
dimension? How come they can hear the Chumbley fumbling its way
around the outside then?
- oh god, Vicki’s off naming things again. What is a ‘Chumbley
movement’ anyway?
- ‘This silence reminds me of the planet, er, Xeros’ says the
Doctor. Oh dear, things can’t bode well if The
Space Museum’s getting a name check.
- I see Steven’s found Ian’s supply of cardigans! Pity the
Chumbley couldn’t have set fire to them rather than the bush it zaps.
 |
| ...while Steven's offer to resolve the situation by 'shagging the Drahvin leader 'til her ears dropped off'' was met with stony silence. |
- the strange white fossilised structures on the planet’s
surface look like upright poodle poo (is poodle poo white, or is that just an urban myth we picked up when we were kids?) Quite literally shit trees perhaps?
- the Drahvins have crashed their spaceship! I'm not saying anything about women drivers. I just hope they're insured with Sheila's Wheels.
- the craft itself looks like one of my grandmother’s
old cake tins. But there again, as the Doctor remarks in Episode Two, it is meant to be shite. I mean, it’s got a TV aerial on its roof! And why does the closing
airlock door make the same sound as the doors in the Dalek city?
 |
| Drahvins One, Two and Three [pictured yesterday]. |
- oh look, it’s Shirley from EastEnders!
- Drahvins - babes with
guns (they’re like the Happiness Patrol twenty odd years too soon). I wonder if
they ever (literally) let their hair down. As it is they look more like Dusty
Springfield’s backing singers than hardened space mercenaries. And, I’m sorry,
but I don’t know how fan-lore ever got the impression that they’re a ‘beautiful
race of clones’. For one thing they’re about as similar looking to one another
as the Sontarans, and for another they look like Dick Emery in drag (their
sequinned eyebrows are certainly worthy of any female impersonator I’ve ever
come across). I also see the pleated skirt is “in” on Drahva. Their armaments
include a big metal net. Maybe they go fishing in their spare time? However, on
the plus side, the structure of their society is quite fascinating. They remind me of insects, with the “brainless” worker drones serving and
carrying out the orders of their queen. The males of the species are kept to a
minimum and the surplus ones killed, which makes me think of female spiders
eating their male mates once their usefulness is at an end (I wonder if the
intelligent Drahvins practice cannibalism?) They also eat what look like vine
leaves, so they’re either insects or Greek.
- when Billy attempts to explain the meaning of the word ‘female’
to Maaga he stares directly at her vag whilst waving his hand around in that
general genital area. Hardly subtle!
- Maaga berating her Drahvin soldiers over the loss of the
mesh comes over as being all very lesbian dominatrix. It suddenly feels as if Doctor Who is having a go at doing The Killing of Sister George…all we’re
missing is Coral Browne, Susannah Yorke and the ice cubes.
- the Chumbley trying to get into the Drahvin spaceship tries
everything bar chucking a brick through the window. Maybe if the Rills had
bothered to give them something resembling hands instead of bits of old pipe
and an aerial that flashes whilst whistling annoyingly, they could’ve given
this a go.
- why is Maaga wearing
driving gloves?
- Steven has the nerve to say it was quite a decent spaceship
once. How would he know. At the end of Episode Three he doesn’t even seem to recognise an airlock!
 |
| Two Dawns [pictured yesterday]. |
- how on Earth does the Doctor work out that the planet only
has two dawns left without having any kind of information as to where or when
they are? If the astral map is that good at coming up with the answers without
any kind of programming, then maybe he should leave it plugged in more often.
- Steven volunteers to remain behind as the Drahvins prisoner
while the Doctor and Vicki make the journey to the Rills spaceship. Hmmm, his
motives for doing so aren’t in the slightest bit suspicious, are they! He’s
probably hoping for a large explosion all of his own. Of course, if this were Star Trek there’d be lots of soft focus lenses,
an awful lot of pouting and some suitably slinky muzak as the mindless female
drones are brought to their senses by a jolly good seeing-to.
- oh god, the Doctor calls the Chumblies’ weaponry ‘ray guns’
(see The Space Museum…again).
 |
| Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was somewhat taken by aback when the fellas from UNITs crack anti-tank missile platoon turned up for work refusing to wear army regulation uniforms. |
- I love the way Steven attempts to instigate rebellion in
the Drahvin ranks by suggesting to the one guarding him that their weaponry and
food is substandard in comparison with that of Maaga’s. He’s still got the
patter despite two years being kept locked up by large silvery golf balls with
sore throats. Peter Purves plays this scene beautifully. It’s a shame the
second half of the story lets him down so badly script wise.
- Chumblies - look like jelly moulds. Apparently
they only pick up sound coming from directly in front of them, which means they
have even less awareness of what’s going on around them than a profoundly deaf,
partially blind, pensioner. The Rills could at least have fitted them with rear
view mirrors. Oh, and they look cheap...really cheap. One of them is brought to life by the marvellously names Pepi Poupée
(wasn’t he the amorous skunk in the Warner
Bros. cartoons?) The noises they make are truly annoying, they remind me of
that irritating little robotic bastard in Buck
Rogers in the 25th Century - the number of times I was tempted
to put my foot through the television screen on the rare occasions I tuned in
to watch it. It was only Gil Gerard in a tight fitting white uniform that
stopped me.
 |
| Maaga spends a quiet afternoon marking the Drahvins' homework. |
- Air Lock - I was lucky enough to see this when it was screened at the BFI just before Christmas 2012. And what a great experience it was...watching a rediscovered episode, not seen for over forty years (an episode even older than I am!), with a cinema jam packed full of other fans. As it began there were a few embarrassed giggles - there's a toe-curling moment near the beginning where the Doctor and Vicki attempt to hide from an approaching Chumbley in the Rill's centre by hiding behind the smallest instrument panel imaginable, while the complex itself is a tad
disappointing to say the least. It’s all plastic sheeting and scaffolding poles. It looks like
they’ve got the builders in putting up a kitchen extension. When Vicki gets separated from the Doctor by the falling grille, it's so flimsy, Vicki's histrionics seem totally out of place - a charging guinea pig could bring the whole thing crashing down around their ears. Nevertheless, after the first few minutes, we all settled down into a hushed silence - I can quite honestly say that from thereon in you could've heard a pin drop. It was the quietest cinema audience I've ever heard. Stephanie Bidmead is a fantastic villainess, turning in an utterly compelling, and quite surprisingly sexual performance. Many of her speeches are in close up, direct to camera, and this gives you a real insight into the inner frustration she feels at being lumbered with a shit spaceship and a drongo crew. It's a really still and centered performance, totally focused. Just like a Hollywood actress of old, Ms Bidmead conveys so much emotion through her eyes...pride, anger, weariness, disappointment. I only hope that now more of the story has been discovered she'll start to get the recognition she deserves as being one of the shows better baddies.
 |
| The Drahvin spaceship was basic in the extreme... there wasn't even an indoor lav. And Steven was busting! There was nothing else for it...he was just going to have to have a dump in the corner of the air lock. |
- the point where Steven (who's been pretending to be asleep) jumps his nodding-off Drahvin guard comes across as quite shockingly misogynistic. It's a really physical attack. I suppose as it was originally written it would've been Barbara doing the fisticuffs bit. In which case it would probably have added heaps to the lesbian subtext (it wouldn't surprise me to learn that William Emms typed this whole script out one-handed, because, with the amount of woman-on-woman action taking place - regardless of Steven's substitution - it makes me think his other hand was on a different job entirely!)
- Rills - look like turds. How ironic then that they smell! They’re also terribly
well-spoken…the sort of alien life form you wouldn’t mind having as your next
door neighbour.
- ‘I have heard, that on occasions, they even die for one
another’ says Maaga of the humanoid creatures they have come into contact with,
which beautifully foreshadows the sacrifices made in the upcoming The Daleks’ Master Plan.
- the Rills were ‘investigating outer space’ just before
being shot down. I suppose just like the Drahvins remit to ‘conquer space’
there’s nothing like thinking big.
- the bomb the Chumbley carries to chuck through the window
of the Drahvin spaceship, which just happens to be open (they’re obviously
believers in getting as much fresh air as possible; perhaps it wasn’t the Rills
that shot the ship down…maybe someone just forgot to close the window before
taking off from Drahva) looks like a eye-wateringly large butt plug (in the
recon at least). Turns out it’s an ammonia bomb…so the Rills are like naughty
schoolboys letting off a stink bomb in matrons office.
 |
| The Doctor was beginning to get really pissed off now. The Chumbley just wouldn't leave him alone! It was following him everywhere! What was was worse, it took every opportunity available to it to mount his leg and give it a jolly good rogering. And no matter how often he kicked the little bugger, it just wouldn't stop! |
- Maaga calls Steven Earthman…oh dear, it’s all in danger of
becoming a bit Queen of Outer Space.
Except Maaga wouldn’t know what to do with a man even if he came with an
instruction booklet (apart from kill him of course). But why suddenly this
mention of Earth? Even the Rills are at it ‘You come from Earth - a planet we
don't know…’ Well, if you don’t know it why harp on about it then? When have
they had time to have a bit of a sit down and a chat about where they all come
from anyway? Has the Doctor filled them at some point? And if so, surely it’s
further evidence that the current thinking is the Doctor himself is from Earth
(which began back in The Web Planet
if you remember…or were sober enough…I blame it all on that bloody Dalek
film)…unless he’s claiming to come from there nowadays just to avoid awkward
questions. Nevertheless, this constantly having to bring Earth into the equation
is really beginning to get on my tits. Back in The Web Planet the Animus suddenly decided - completely out of the
blue - it wanted to invade the place, and now, people who come from as far away
as Galaxy 4 are talking about it as if it were just a bus ride away. Enough
already!
 |
| The cover of CMS / In Vision, depicting a *ahem* rather 'well-developed' Drahvin on the front cover! Puts a whole new meaning to the term 'Fanwank'. |
- it’s nice to see that Steven’s a bit mistrusting of Rills
to begin with - though I’m beginning to wonder now how much this can be put
down to his long spell in captivity and how much being narky comes naturally to him.
- ‘…everything he has shown he stands for, is what we believe
in…’ says the Rill of the Doctor. It’s a good job then that they’re meeting
him now and not around the time of 100,000
BC when he started off on his travels, otherwise they’d be heading round to
the Drahvin spaceship with big rocks to bash the living crap out of them.
- ‘I think the evenings last here for about...four hours’
says the Doctor. He’s changed his tune…it was two hours back in Trap
of Steel.
- four episodes in and we finally
get a sign that this planet is indeed about to go pop! It’s almost like William
Emms forgot until the very last minute and suddenly thought ‘Better chuck in an
Earth tremor or two’.
- the Chumblies can emit paralysing gas…maybe they could set
up some kind of trade agreement with the Moroks who could do with a paralysing
gas that actually works. Actually, now I think about it, Drahvins are really
nothing more than female versions of the Moroks.
- ‘Can we see the disintegration [of the planet] on the scanner Doctor?’ asks
Steven. ‘No’ comes the reply (‘the budget won’t stretch to it’ is what really needs to be added here).
- Death-o-Meter: 131. Drahvin - (dies in
flashback) injured after the crash landing on the planet’s surface, then shot by
Maaga, who was intent on using her death as propaganda against the Rills. What
a cow; 132 - 134. Drahvin One,
Drahvin Two and Drahvin Three - die when the planet explodes.
Sillies…their mission was to conquer space, not splatter themselves all across
it; 135. Maaga - ditto.
Still, at least it shuts the hatchet faced old trout up.
(8 Rills died after their spaceship was shot down by the
Drahvins. We don’t see any of this, but I can imagine there was lots of frantic
flipper flapping going on; a Chumbley is kyboshed by Drahvin Three but it’s not alive, no matter
how much Vicki might protest otherwise; another one sacrifices itself so the
Doctor and co. can safely get back to the TARDIS…it’s a bit like Drone 2
getting nuked in Silent Running…except
that this isn’t sad in the slightest.)
D. Chumbley was a practitioner and
theorist of magic, as well as being a writer, poet and artist - it’s a pity then
that William Emms couldn’t have called him in to wave his magic wand over this
utterly pedestrian script, or failing that utilised his English language skills
to rewrite the bloody thing to give it a bit more oomph; Maaga means “early” in Tagalog (an Austronesian language), and not,
as one might have expected, “sour-faced old harridan”; a Rill is a brook or rivulet, or, in garden design, an aesthetic
water feature - although who would want something that looked like a big shit
plonked in the middle of their lawn, water pouring out of its moth into an
ornamental pond, is beyond me; Galaxy 4
is a smartphone with S Pen - just the thing both the Drahvins and the Rill
could’ve done with to call the RAC
emergency breakdown helpdesk.
Score on the
TARDIS Doors - 5 - so the third season
begins more with a whimper than a bang. It’s hardly Spearhead from Space or The Impossible Astronaut is it (although whether that’s a good or a
bad thing I’ll let you decide). Not that it’s bad per se, just a bit...meh! I
can’t help but think it would’ve been a better twist if it had all been a
double bluff and the “dolly bird” Drahvins really had turned out to be the
goodies and the “ugly” (I’m putting everything in inverted commas you’ll notice
in an attempt to appear rather more PC for once) old Rills the brain-sucking
baddies. As it stands, it’s dangerously close to being a bit too “worthy”
(look…I’m at it again!), so much so you can almost image it being turned into a
Hollywood “blockbuster” (oh, this is
getting ridiculous now) starring the likes of Angelina Jolie as Maaga and Tom
Cruise as the voice of the Rills, with the plot being just one enormous
metaphor for the battle against terrorism. The story also acts as a bit of an allegory for the way in which male and female BBC employees at the time viewed each other in light of the sexual revolution that was happening in society at large, with the women, now taking on jobs pretty much exclusively filled by men up to that point, being portrayed as nothing more than cold-hearted, male-hating lesbians, and the go-getting young women looking on the men dominating the higher echelons of the organisation as repulsively bloated office bound creatures completely unable to do anything on their own, instead making their brainless minions do all the hard work. And with this being Verity Lambert's penultimate story in charge, it almost feels as if this is being done on purpose.
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