Leon E. Bender life

… blah,
blah, blah…’the Taranium must be recovered’…blah, blah, blah…’failure will not
be tolerated’…blah, blah, blah (repeat for three months), it’s…

The
Daleks’ Master Plan

In
which the Daleks’ are intent on becoming Masters of the Universe (but only if
they win their battle against Skeletor); while Katarina and Sara Kingdom
learn the hard way that it's not a good time to be a Doctor Who companion...

Those sneaky little buggers would do anything             

        to try and gain access to the TARDIS.                     

- A Bit
of a Mare - seeing Terry Nation’s
name roll by in the opening credits of a twelve part story is not for the
faint-hearted (or anyone fitted with a pacemaker). In fact seeing the immortal
caption “The Nightmare Begins” flash up on screen was almost
enough to have me reaching for a brown paper bag. But
thankfully the wonderful Douglas Camfield is in charge, so even if the script’s
going to be a bit ropey in parts, at least we know we’re in a safe pair of
hands as far as the direction goes. The first episode introduces us to Mavic
Chen, while the Doctor lands on Kembel to find some Daleks (cue pant-wettingly
melodramatic musical sting!) and...erm…well, that’s about it really. Not a lot
else happens. The SSS have obviously been looking for Marc Corey after he
failed to return home for his tea, as Nicholas Courtney (looking just
as fit in a Space Security Service uniform as he does in a Brigadier’s one)
turns up to investigate his disappearance and ends up spending a
good ten minutes glued to a magnetic chair - which the Doctor claims to have
invented. ‘It has a force field strong enough to restrain a herd of elephants…’
apparently! Yeah, but only if you can get them to sit in it in the first
place! If he’s so bloody clever it’s a pity he couldn’t have put his energies
into giving the TARDIS a bit of an overhaul. It’s always breaking down. But no,
he has to go and concentrate his efforts into putting together a bit
of carpentry that you can’t get up out of! Katarina’s still failing to make
much of an impression (she doesn’t even know what a key is when the Doctor
shows her the one to the TARDIS! Don’t bother unpacking your suitcase love).
She spends most of her time mopping Steven’s fevered brow - a job I’d happily
volunteer to do. I’d even throw in a bed bath. Peel him the odd banana.
Whatever was needed really.

- the
Doctor’s presumably looking for some penicillin so’s to stop the poison that's
racing through Stevens' system (blood poisoning he’s picked up from the
Trojan soldiers dirty sword…and no, that’s not a euphemism!). I mean…come on!
Even the Monk had a supply aboard his TARDIS. The Doctor really is a bit of a
rubbish time traveller.

- on Earth,
in the central communications room, everyone seems to be slacking, arguing about
which television channel they should watch instead of actually doing any
work. One of the women (Lizard or something) wants to watch Newsnight (yawn!)
on Channel 403 (they must have Sky to have that many channels
to choose from…is Rupert Murdoch still alive in the year 4000? Maybe he’s had
himself frozen Walt Disney like) while the bloke wants to watch the football.
Typical!

- Spaceships - Lizan and Roald go on to discuss the merits of
various spacecraft (it feels as if I’ve tuned into a future version of Top
Gear). The Flip T-4 is one of the latest models on
the market (it sounds more like a board game for 2 to 6 players ages 3+). Roald
calls it a ‘trifle brash’ so it’s obviously the outer space equivalent of a boy
racer mobile, pimped to buggery with stereo, sub-woofers, alloy wheels, tinted
windows, under-car neons and dump valves. Proud owners probably think they’re
in possession of a very impressive fanny magnet, whereas in reality they look
like complete and utter knobs as they tear up the space lanes putting the
fear of god up more sedate drivers in their spacecraft equivalent of Morris
Minor's. The SPAR 7-40 on the other hand sounds
much classier. Shame it’s named after a well-known convenience store. It even
boasts a cassette player, which the Doctor uses to listen to his tape
in Devil’s Planet (sadly it's not 'Bananarama'). It’s
landings, however, would appear to be rather bumpy as it attempts to touch
down before its feet have stopped spinning, meaning it bounces about on contact
with the ground for a few, no doubt uncomfortable, moments. In fact there’s an
awful lot of buggering about in spaceships in this story. The TARDIS in Episode
One, the Spar in Episode’s Three and Four, the Dalek ship in Episode Six, the
Monk’s in Eight and Nine...

- Mavic
Chen’s being interviewed on a sort of space age version of Parkinson.
Wouldn’t it be marvellous if he was on the same bill as Rod Hull and Emu.
That’d take the smug grin off his bloody face - having some man’s hand stuck up
the arse of a not very lifelike representation of a New Zealand species of
flightless bird grabbing for, and attaching itself to, his knackers, and
refusing to let go! He’s basically saying ‘Peace for our time’…yeah,
and look what happened the last time someone in power uttered such
immortal words. It’s quite a shock when he turns up on the Daleks doorstep and
reveals himself to be a traitor though. It’s a bit like Churchill popping round
to Hitler’s bunker with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine.

Yeah, pimp that space age pencil, Chen.

- good
grief! Back in The Daleks I accused Susan of having atrocious
handwriting! It’s perfect copperplate compared to Mavic Chens’. I couldn’t
quite tell to begin with if he was writing a letter or having a stroke. From
his illegible scrawl he’s clearly not meant to be English. Mind you, with this
being produced in the 60s, a traitor of his magnitude obviously had to look and
act like a Johnny foreigner! Bearing this in mind, I see they’ve been at
Kevin Stoney’s face with the gravy browning. Sheesh!

- Zephon - walks like he's had a nasty accident of the
brown variety in his underpants. As he ambles around, he sticks his arms
out, as if he’s waiting for his underarm deodorant to dry. And he’s got really
scabby feet, which look fairly familiar…it’s not Koquillion in a cloak is it?
From the state of his hands he seems to be suffering from an acute case of
psoriasis (when the Doctor and the other blokes strip him of his outer
garments, the sight of him not even semi-naked [he seems to be wearing a satin
slip underneath] appears to make Katarina gag). Bet he looks like the Singing
Detective in the buff. When his face is finally revealed it looks like a
semi-shredded cabbage (it’s put me right off coleslaw and no mistake). He also
seems to be sporting a Jim’ll Fix It medallion. Perhaps he
wrote to Mr Saville asking if he could be supreme leader of the universe, and
he got a reply back saying “Oh, go on then”. The Doctor imitates him
during Day of Armageddon so that he can attend the
Daleks’ conference, find out what’s going on and half-inch the Taranium. God
knows how he gets away with it though. All he thinks he has to do is stick on
his cloak - he makes no attempt to walk oddly or stick his arms out. Yet no-one
bats an eyelid. He looks more like a Headless Monk from A Good Man Goes
to War. Still, it’s quite ironic that the last time we saw the Daleks they
were trying to infiltrate the Doctor’s camp with a (shite) double of him,
whereas here, he’s doing exactly the same to them. That’s one in the eye-stalk
for team TARDIS methinks.

- if what
Chen waves about as he chats with Zephon is anything to go by then it would
appear that the Daleks have written their plans for universal domination on a
roll of wallpaper.

- one of
the delegates (Celation) appears to be covered in Comic Relief red
noses. He/she/it also walks as if heavily sedated…a bit like Nanette Newman
doing the rounds of the supermarket in The Stepford Wives.



- back in
the jungle and that farting elephant sound effect is back I hear!

I see Steven's right arm

is in a sling. Too much

"self-gratification"? He

really was held prisoner

on his own for a long time,

wasn't he!

- Operation
(Disco) Inferno - sees the Daleks
setting fire to Kemble’s flora (with their pyro-flame attachments [well, they
were hardly likely to attempt it with a box of matches, were they…it’d have
taken them bloody hours just to get a match out of the box, never mind trying
to strike it]), although it takes a bit of effort to get some of the foliage to
catch…Ray Cusick probably used a bit too much flame retardant spray…on
strict instruction from the fire brigade no doubt (who were more than
likely standing just behind the camera with half a dozen or so buckets of
sand just in case things got a bit out of control). The Daleks should’ve
brought a can of petrol with them.

- when we
see Steven in moving pictures in Day of Armageddon he’s
wearing his normal clothes. But surely he should still be in his Trojan outfit.
Perhaps Katarina helped him to get changed? The lucky bitch!

- the
Doctor suggests hot-wiring Chen’s spaceship. And we all thought he became a
wide-boy chav in the Twenty-First Century!

When the Dalek's had first

agreed to compere the Miss

Universe Y4K contest, they

hadn't quite realised what

utter munters the

contestants would turn

out to be.

- it’s a
nice big conference room the Daleks have managed to book. Bet they had to put a
deposit down months in advance in order to secure it. I wonder if tea and
biscuits are served at regular intervals by a little old lady with a trolley.

- The
Taranium Core - apparently it’s taken
fifty years mining Uranus to acquire enough Taranium to get the Time Destructor
going! Ouch! I wonder if Chen employed the services of seven dwarves? The two
halves of the Core are held together by what looks like a whacking great hinge
off of someone’s front door. A full emm of the stuff can make you go blind
according to the Doctor…just like too much masturbation! The Doctor makes a
copy of it in Coronas of the Sun, no doubt by taking the
label off an old baked bean tin and filling it with a few wires and a very
small light bulb.

- The
Gay Agenda - in Day of
Armageddon Zephon is surprised that Chen has decided to become
‘one of us’. Well, in my experience dear, you never can tell; there again, the
fact that the Guardian of the Solar System has perfectly manicured nails is a
bit of a giveaway…bet he’s a frequent visitor to ‘Wendy’s Hair and Nail Bar’ on
the high street. ‘Get us off, get us off, get us off’ insists the Doctor to Brett
as they attempt to flee Kembel in a stolen spaceship the following episode!
Blimey, he’s insistent, isn’t he! No wonder Katarina calls him ‘the Great One’.
Brett does get him off, for which the Doctor sounds extremely grateful. Soon
after, he tells Brett that Chen is ‘one of them’. Presumably that’ll explain
why he’s been poking about Uranus for the last fifty years. The only other
inhabitants of the planet Desperus would appear to be the Screamers! Ah well,
at least with a bunch of homosexuals on hand the convicts are never going to
get too lonely. In Escape Switch the Doctor’s at it
again, inviting Chen to ‘join me at the back here’ before promptly giving him
what he’s been after for about six episodes. Shortly after this encounter the
Doctor refers to him as Magic Chen…hmmm, it must’ve been good.

Some silly bugger had taken

the label off. Now they didn't

know if they were about to eat

a tin of tomato soup or

peach slices in a light

syrup.

- Desperus - how Terry Nation gets away with it is beyond me.
First he gives us a planet scarred by war called Skaro, then a water world
called Marinus, followed in quick succession by a sun parched planet called
Aridius and a planet run by metal servo-robots called Mechanus. Now we get a
planet full of desperate criminals called Desperus! At least when he reused the
idea of a penal colony in space in Blake’s 7 he had the
decency  to rename it Cygnus Alpha - something a little less bleeding
obvious at least. As a planet it’s a bit basic. In fact, from the pictures that
have survived, it looks like the Tribe of Gum have developed space flight
(Terry uses a knife in the same way that Anthony Coburn used fire back in that
story, as a status symbol capable of bestowing leadership upon the person able
to claim it as their own; and whereas it was Za and Kal at each other’s throats
back then, here it’s Bors and Kirksen).

- Katarina - spends practically all of her time on the show
calling the Doctor ‘Lord’ and worrying that without him she won’t make it to
the Place of Perfection. In Devil’s Planet she’s
adamant Brett mustn’t take-off without him, although if she wants to know the
way to somewhere why doesn’t she ask Brett to do what anyone else would do
in the same situation - pull into the nearest lay-by, wind down the window and
ask a passing yokel for directions; ‘Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to
the Place of Perfection please’; ‘Ooh arr, now let me see moi luvverly. Ee goes
down this ‘ere rowd fer about ‘aaalf a moile, turn roight at ee powst aaarfice
until ee comes to ee Whoite Loiun an’ it’s four-‘undred yards down on ee left’.

- why is
Kirksen so insistent they take him to Kembel? Does he own a time share property
there or something? Why doesn’t he want to head for some kind of civilisation?
I mean, if he went back to his planet of origin, surely he could disappear into
the underworld there and sort himself out a new identity. But no, he wants to
go to Kembel. Or, as the Doctor calls it early on in The Traitors,
Kendall (clearly he’s getting it mixed up with the Lake District).

It was Katarina's first date

with a fella since leaving

Troy and...oh-oh! Bad breath!

She wasn't quite sure what

an airlock was, but she

was going to chuck herself

out of it anyway, if only

to get away from the

smell of onions!

- Adric
should take comfort in the fact that he isn’t the only companion to kick the
bucket and then be completely forgotten about ten minutes later.

- eh? Hang
on a mo’. As soon as they get back to Earth, the Doctor’s insistent they return
to Kembel (presumably so he can get back to the TARDIS). So what was the point
of going to Earth in the first place then? To warn them of Chen’s duplicity I
suppose. But the only person they’re able to get near to without being
assassinated is some old bloke with a receding hairline and a bit of a lantern
jaw who works for the Fortieth Century equivalent of ICI, and who
turns out to be a traitor anyway. Why didn’t they just go back to Kembel, pick
up the TARDIS and then try to get a message though to Earth from there? It’s
all just a bit unnecessarily convoluted.

- the
conference is starting to feel a bit like a “bad day at the office” by Episode
Four - everyone’s started bitching about Mavic Chen behind his back, pissed off
that he considers himself to be second in command to the director of the
company, whereas in truth he’s really just the equivalent of a spotty youth on
a YTS employed to do the photocopying. Trantis is officially next in importance
after the Daleks, as according to Chen, he has ‘the largest galaxy’ (while
Sentreal presumably just has a regular size Twix, Celation a king
size Mars Bar and Beaus a Finger of Fudge). So
jealous is Chen at the position Trantis holds it’s a wonder he doesn’t start
spreading malicious gossip that he slept with the boss (i.e. the Dalek Supreme)
to get where he is.

Let's have a "Spot the Peter

Purves and guess what he's

doing to Jean Marsh"

competition.

- ‘Strange
room’ says Steven as he and the Doctor enter what appears to be the Top
of the Pops studio. All it needs is Tony Blackburn and a few sixties
teenagers moving awkwardly to the latest Motown release. Mind
you…dissemination sounds far too much like insemination for my liking.

- okay, so
the experiment is all about teleportation. But surely this is already possible
by the year 4000? There’s a teleportation relay on board Nerva in Revenge
of the Cybermen, for example, which, by my reckoning, takes place at least
a thousand years before this. Yet Froyn says only ‘small objects can be sent by
cellular fragmentation over some short distances’. Presumably it’s a forgotten
technology which they’re now only just rediscovering. Nevertheless, it comes to
something when human civilisation - which by this point is thousands of years
old - looks on the likes of Blake’s 7 and Star Trek:
The Original Series as being state-of-the-art!

- and so,
with the Doctor’s, Steven’s and Sara’s journey to the planet Mira in Counter
Plot, Doctor Who well and truly enters the psychedelic
sixties. They might as well roll up a spliff, grab a beanbag and put the Grateful
Dead on the record player. It’s incredibly trippy. Although I notice
there was no way in hell they were getting Bill onto the trampoline…which is
probably just as well. He’d have had to have had a couple of episodes off to
get over it. Instead he stands in the corner of the studio, gurning into Camera
5.

The Daleks didn't really

understand the concept

behind "Hide & Seek",

but Chen was almost up

to one-hundred and he'd

soon be coming, 'ready or

not'...whatever the hell

that meant.

- just like
the airlock on Chen’s Spar, the door of the control room in the experimental
station (from where Froyn and Rhynmal keep an eye on the dissemination project)
is hardly high tech, is it? It has to be slid open and closed by hand. You’d
think a plant wherein cutting edge technology was being developed would be
a little more up to the minute. Clearly their work has nothing to do with new
door technology.

- are we
sure Rhynmal hasn’t just walked in off the street and put on an official
experimental station uniform. I get the feeling he doesn’t mix much with his
other colleagues out of work hours, probably because he has to go straight home
in order to look after his elderly mother. In fact, I think he’s escaped
from Last of the Summer Wine. Either that or he thinks he’s Alan
Bennett.

- Technix - slap heads in the ubiquitous uniform of black polo
neck jumper and matching trousers…which obviously means the budget’s getting a
bit tight. They’re like older versions of the Xerons…with alopecia.

- Mira - is fantastic. Note to Production Team:
this is what Mechanus should’ve looked like! They clearly kept the paddling
pool used for the swamp scenes in The Daleks in storage, coz
it gets a dusting off here and is used to great effect.

Altogether now - "Y.M.C.A."

- Mavic
Chen - half Ming the Merciless
wannabe, half ‘Black and White Minstrel’. We know from Mission to the
Unknown that Earth is top of the Daleks’ “List of things to Conquer”
and that consequently Mavic Chen is as doomed as a ten bob note right from the
word go. Nevertheless, any tension that might've been lost is more than made up
for in Kevin Stoney’s magnificent performance, which is a masterclass of a
man’s descent into madness. His emotional disintegration parallels Hitler’s at
the end of the Second World War in films such as Downfall. He
starts to go off the rails from as early as Episode Five and, compared to
Karlton - who’s as cool as a cucumber throughout as he waits for the
moment to come when he can snatch power for himself - he’s already a gibbering
loon. It’s a shame that after Counter Plot the scheming
Technix is forgotten about, as there was plenty of mileage left in their
relationship. I love the way Chen’s eyes roll to the back of his head during
some of his more egocentric moments, almost as if he’s hearing voices telling
him how great he is and is actively trying to see inside his own head to get a
better look at where they’re coming from. There’s a wonderful moment in Escape
Switch where he shoves a Dalek eyestalk out of his face and the
Dalek reacts by almost doing a double take…as if it can’t quite believe anyone
would have the audacity to do such a thing. The moment in the last episode
where the last vestiges of sanity leave him and he murders one of the delegates
in cold blood is a supremely chilling moment.

- thankfully
the transportation experiment was a success and everyone is reassembled into
exactly the right order upon arrival on Mira. Imagine what it would’ve been
like if the Doctor had woken up with Sara’s chest, Sara with the head of a
mouse and Steven with the Doctor’s propensity for not being able to remember a
bloody word of the script!

A Visian,

pictured yesterday.

- Visians - el cheapo Doctor Who monsters. If
the footprints they leave behind are anything to go by then I can image they’re
pretty bloody scary - they certainly sound it - so it really is a pity we can’t
see them. I'm presuming it was money that prevented them from
actually appearing. If it was a lack of imagination on behalf of the designer
then they should've just held a design a (crap) monster competition on Blue
Peter? When Bill is called to fight one off with his walking cane he starts
beating the crap out of a potted fern…it’s marvellously funny. Apparently
they’re eight feet tall, which means that from the relatively low angle and
height of his attack, he gives one of them a good beating around the bollocks.
Nasty! I can’t help but think Visians is a bit of a misnomer though. Shouldn’t
it be In-Visians? They have a habit of waggling shrubbery about (just like the
Refusians) and breathing heavily just so that we know they’re there! How
thoughtful.

- Mavic
Chen’s writing implement is covered in tin foil…to make it look a bit more
space-agey no doubt!

- Coronas
of the Sun - written by Dennis
Spooner “from an idea by Terry Nation”. That’s almost libellous isn’t it. Ok…he
did have one good idea, two years ago when he thought up the Daleks (although
the person who should receive credit for making them the success they became -
Ray Cusick - is sadly overlooked by all but the most die-hard fans).
Anyway…yes, Mr Spooner takes over. This marks the spot where we gradually go
off on a bit of a tangent for about five episodes, and where all the
politicking back on Earth between Chen and Karlton is sadly forgotten about in
favour of a bit of a run-around as per The Chase.

- slapping
a lump of shite onto the Daleks eyestalk in order to escape = © Barbara
Wright, The Escape.

- ‘Take up
attack formation 'Z'!’ screams one of the Daleks after the Doctor and co have
successfully gained control of the Dalek ship on Mira. I wonder what Attack
Formation’s A-Y were, and, in retrospect, if one of them at least might not
have been a tad more successful? “Z” really feels as if they’re having to scrape
the bottom of the barrel.

- after all
that’s happened, for one dreadful moment we could be forgiven for thinking
Steven’s gone the same way as Katarina and Bret Vyon after his experiment with
‘G-force’ and ‘reliance power’ goes tits up. However, it does have the effect
of turning him into a kind of corduroy clad, well quiffed superhero. The Doctor
says he has no cure for Steven’s condition. What? Being a bit shouty and
insisting all over the place.

- back in
the TARDIS, having outwitted the Daleks, Sara thinks something’s gone wrong
with the TARDIS. ‘It's stopped going up and down’ she points out, referring to
the central column. And talking of going up and down, wasn’t Peter P doing the
same on top of Jean M in her dressing room between studio rehearsals…or am I
just imagining that?

It's Christmas Day, and Bill

addresses the audience

watching at home with the

immortal phrase 'No, I can't

remember what the fuck it is

I'm supposed to say next

either'.

- 'It’s
Chriiiiiistmaaaaaaaassssss' (as Noddy
Holder has been reminding us every festive period since 1973 [BC…or does it
just feel like it’s been that long?]) - and I see that Terry Nation’s back. How
nice. Is he on double-time, what with it being the holiday period? The TARDIS
has landed outside a police station, just as a patrol car pulls up, with some
suspiciously merry policemen inside. Clearly they haven’t bothered to
breathalyse themselves! The Doctor exits, even though the air is described as
being utterly rank. Not a very good advertisement for Liverpool is it. Thank
goodness Maureen O’ Brien left in the last story, otherwise, being a Liver Bird
herself, she’d probably have had something to say to Mr Nation about his
description of her home town (which quite possibly might have ended up with her
forcing him to eat his own gonads if the reputation Scouse women have garnered
over the years is anything to go by…I wouldn't know…although I have
seen Letter to Brezhnev). Anyhoo…the Doctor’s taken in for
questioning. There’s a man at the front desk reporting the fact that ‘the
rebels’ keep moving his greenhouse. I know…don’t tell me, you’re almost wetting
yourselves with laughter and having to pause the DVD player in order to go and
fetch a length of kitchen roll to mop up the tears that’re streaming down your
face, aren't you. No, neither am I. However, all this does mean that Steven
gets to put on a police uniform. I don’t know about any of you, but that in
itself would be enough to make my Christmas.

Director, Douglas Camfield,

breaks the news to his wife,

actress Sheila Dunn, that he

hasn;t in fact cast her as the

new "Doctor Who girl", but

as a bit part in a shite

episode that will be seen

by an audience of about

twelve, all of whom will be

half-asleep after their

enormous Christmas dinners

and too much sherry, and

which will be wiped from the

archives almost as soon

as it's shown anyway.

- 'Hooray
for Hollywood' - and so after the
high-jinks of a northern cop-shop at Xmas, the TARDIS moves onto the film
capital of the world…and no, it’s not Shepperton. It’s LA of course, although
thankfully the ship puts down on the right side of the valley. If they’d landed
in San Fernando god knows what kind of film they’d have interrupted the filming
of. Probably one featuring a scantily clad housewife opening the front door to
a plumber sporting a dodgy blonde moustache. As it is, the film in question
makes Weekend at Bernie’s look like Olivier’s Henry V in
comparison. In fact it’s the type of flick they might very well have shown on
Christmas Day in the 60s after this episode aired. How ironic. The ten minutes
or so that follow on from their arrival are something of a loud, confusing
mess…a sort of really cheap version of the big chase sequence at the end
of The Producers.

- the
shenanigans over and done with, the Doctor, Steven and Sara decide to do what
is customary in the Williams’ household on such festive occasions…get
shit-faced on cheap supermarket sparkling wine before passing out whilst
watching the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special.

- it’s
quite fitting that the episode title that appears on screen after the
Doctor has wished ‘A happy Christmas to all of you at home’ is Volcano…it
sort of mimics fandom exploding at the fact the show has just dared to break
the fourth wall and, in so doing, suggest that what they’ve been watching on
screen isn’t real-life at all!

- 'Should
Auld Acquaintance...' etc etc - so,
it’s now time to wash the copious amounts of spew off the front door step with
a couple of buckets of warm water and bleach and resolve never, ever, EVER to
drink again. Yes, it’s New Year’s Day and Doctor Who’s back on the
box. Celation, Trantis and Chen are having a bit of a chat, a scene no doubt
intended to assure viewers that the continuing narrative is still bubbling away
in the background and hasn’t been forgotten about entirely, despite the holiday
period. Celation sounds as though he’s forgotten his inhaler. Either that or
he’s attempting to get the party going with an impression of an Ice Warrior.
The atmosphere is somewhat ruined when the Daleks attempt to test their Time
Destructor only to find out it’s got a dodgy part. Chen insists the Taranium
must be good, pointing out ‘…it came from Uranus’, although how Kevin Stoney
manages to deliver the line with a straight face is beyond me. It’s a credit to
his professionalism. It would’ve taken me at least a dozen takes, and even then
they would’ve had to resort to filming me from behind while someone dubbed
the line in for me. Meanwhile, believing that the Daleks are onto him, the
Doctor materialises the TARDIS in the middle of a cricket match. What follows
is a mercifully short scene which nevertheless is as tedious as having to watch
a test match in full. We’re clearly still in “wacky” festive mode. But it’s not
the Dalek's in hot pursuit (at least, not yet). No, it’s Peter Butterworth.
Hooray! A proper comedian at last. The jokes might start working now! He
knobbles the TARDIS lock which means the Doctor and co. are unable to get back
inside....for a couple of minutes. Jesus! I mean…what’s the point? Still, at least
it’s not as bad as the most recent episode of the series to be screened on New
Year’s Day. Yes, I’m looking at you Part Two of The End of Time. In
fact, in comparison, this all makes perfect sense. After Tigus the TARDIS and
its crew land in Trafalgar Square. If I were them I’d nip out and have a swift
glass of sherry in Halfway II Heaven.

Oooh, exotic! In fact, if you

squint and look in I swear

you can see Judith

Chalmers standing at the

foot of the main pyramid.

- 'Walk
Like an Egyptian' - hmmmm, I see the
pharaohs have got the builders in. There’s construction material all over the
shop - planks of wood, masonry, stone blocks, empty tea mugs and a half eaten
packet of chocolate digestives. Although when the TARDIS first arrives they’re
obviously on an extended lunch break as there’s no bugger to be seen. The
Doctor’s still trying to fix the lock. Maybe he should’ve got someone
from Yellow Pages out while they were in London, though it
would’ve cost an arm and a leg what with it being New Year’s Eve. Repairs
complete he dons a Panama hat. Panama hats are cool. The Monk arrives and
promptly dons a pair of Ray Bans - now that really is cool!
Inside the pyramid it looks a bit like one of those auction rooms you might see
in one of those dreary lunchtime antiques programmes - it’s full of all kinds
of bric-a-brac. They want to have a bit of a clear out and take some of the
stuff down the local charity shop. And, finally, Sara gets to prove
her credentials and do a bit of karate business as she works her way through a
bunch of locals. With Escape Switch we’re back to clear
and moving pictures at last and - dear god Khephren’s hairy! So much so you
could almost be forgiven for thinking you’re watching the only surviving
episode of The Abominable Snowmen!

The Egyptian version of

Dad's Army was the highest

rated programme on

El Mehwar TV. 'Don't

panic, Captain El Siyad...'

- there's a
stand-off between the TARDIS crew and the Daleks in which the Taranium Core is
handed over. Erm...isn’t this where we were four episodes ago?

- it’s The
Abandoned Planet and we’re back on Kembel. I see Operation Inferno
didn’t cause all that much damage. It would seem the Dalek's pyro-flame
attachments just caused the odd plant to go a bit crispy here and there. And
what with their firebombs failing to make much (and for ‘much’ read ‘any’)
impact on London’s infrastructure in The Dalek Invasion of Earth…
well…it comes to something doesn’t it, when the supreme beings in the universe
could learn a thing or two about making fire from the Tribe of Gum.

- the
Daleks’ time machine looks a bit like one of those fancy Glade air
fresheners.

- Mavic
Chen addresses the final council meeting, and makes himself even more
unpopular, if that’s at all possible, telling the assembled delegates that
‘some of us are more equal than others’ when they question him as to why he’s
privy to information they’re not. Cue an awful lot of nagging, much table
banging and calls for him to be arrested…although I’d like to see them try calling
999 just to see what kind of a response they get. ‘Is it an emergency?’,
‘Well…yes as a matter of fact it is…one of the representatives is getting a bit
above his station’, ‘Right ho, then, we’ll send a constable straight over on a
bicycle’.

"...'and what's more,

Verity' I said, 'after another

three pints I can stick

a sock on it and pretend

it's a draught excluder'."

Bill's between takes

stories were legendary.

- the
entire Galactic council are shoved into the same cell by the Daleks and left to
stew. All very cosy, although, considering the diverse range of alien life
forms they encompass, I wouldn’t like the task of emptying the bucket in the
corner afterwards. I’ve a feeling that Celation’s excrescence would look
particularly unpleasant - a bit like a white Cadbury’s Picnic with
chocolate covered spots I would imagine.

- the
Daleks are hiding in force underground it turns out, just like they do in Planet
of the Daleks. How kind of Terry Nation to repay Dennis Spooner for writing
the second half of a story that he couldn’t be arsed to finish of himself by
nicking this idea and reusing it in a few years’ time.

- in the
last episode, the Doctor says the Time Destructor will continue to work until
‘the Taranium has finally burnt itself out’. Bit of a manufacturing oversight,
wasn’t it…not building in an off switch!

- Sara
Kingdom - the season started off with
the Drahvins and now, just a couple of stories down the line, we get Doctor
Who’s very own answer to Emma Peel. What a pity though that all the good
work being done towards depicting strong, intelligent and resourceful women in
the series is chucked in a bucket and pissed on in the very next script with
the introduction of Dodo, a female character that is the very antithesis of all
the qualities I’ve just listed. In fact, we get a succession of screaming
annoyances who are, on the whole, as dim as a ten watt bulb (until Zoe stows
away that is). The reasoning behind bringing in a kick-arse female companion is
sound, but ultimately you have to ask yourself ‘what was the point?’ She’s
given absolutely nothing of note to do; apart from a quick demonstration of her
potential in a blink and you’ll miss it scrap in Golden Death (which
ironically we do miss because the episode no longer exists) she’s nothing more
than canon-fodder right from the word go. Granted, her act of (accidental)
self-sacrifice at the end is affecting, but so was Katarina’s. As originally
envisioned, it was Vicki who was due to chuck herself out of the airlock at the
beginning of The Traitors, but wouldn’t it have been so much
better if it had played out differently. What if the TARDIS had left Troy with
both Katarina and Vicki on-board, with Katarina’s death in Episode Four merely
being a foreshadowing of Vicki’s death in Episode Twelve. Having Vicki age to
death would’ve been incredibly powerful and poignant. Much more so than that of
a five second companion. I can’t help but think that in the rush to put their
own stamp on the series the new production team missed a trick there.

- Death-O-Meter: 147. Kert Gantry -
exterminated by the Daleks. What a shame as he was played by the lovely Brian
Cant (have to make sure you use the correct vowel when spelling his name),
giving a wonderfully edgy, albeit far too brief, performance - altogether now
“Play-away-way, play-away-a-play-away-a-way-way-a-play-away-away-way”. It would
never have happened if Big Ted and Hamble had been there to protect him; 148. Zephon -
really gets the Daleks’ goat when his arrogant, self-important attitude means
the meeting between the various galactic superpowers is delayed and the
Taranium core stolen. Not only this, but he allows himself to get captured and
impersonated by the Doctor. However, most importantly, the holdup means the hot
finger buffet goes cold. So the Daleks exterminate him. Ha! Serves him right.
There’s nothing worse than tepid spring rolls; 149. Katarina -
ejects both herself and Kirksen out into space. Of course, if the Doctor hadn’t
left the bloody spaceship’s front door open this could’ve been avoided; 150. Kirksen -
maybe if he hadn’t have been so insistent on going to Kembel he’d be sitting up
in the Lake District (see Doctor’s earlier comment) with a new identity,
sipping Pina Coladas and doing the odd spot of fell walking; 151. Daxtar -
shot by Bret for being a traitor (he does that thing of giving himself away by
mentioning something important before he’s even been told about it…in this case
the Taranium - a sure sign then that this is a Terry Nation script); 152. Bret
Vyon - shot by his sister, Sara Kingdom (interestingly, she has a
different surname to his. Does this mean she’s married. If so, Amy Pond isn’t
the first married woman to have been the Doctor’s companion…although let’s not
get into the argument of whether Sara is a companion or not.
Life’s too short); 153. Trantis - believing he’s
getting just a bit too big for his boots, the Daleks initially attempt to try
out the Time Destructor on him, but when it doesn’t work they simply
exterminate him instead. The moral of the story surely must be…keep your big
fat gob shut and don’t get lippy with an inhabitant of the planet Skaro; 154. Hyksos -
exterminated by the Daleks outside the Great Pyramid, still…lovely spot for
it; 155 - 162. Egyptian Warriors - ditto. Although
I suppose they could’ve just passed out due to sunstroke; 163. Gearon -
shot by Chen as he finally flips and attempts to take over the Galactic
council. Still, we’ve all had days at work where we’ve wanted to pass an
annoying colleagues head through the paper shredder; 164. Mavic
Chen - exterminated by the Daleks for being as mad as a bag of
badgers (he also tried to shoot the Dalek Supreme, which probably wasn’t the
wisest career move he’d ever made); 165. Sara Kingdom -
ages to death whilst helping the Doctor with the Time Destructor, despite his
protestations. Let that be a lesson to all future companions - do as your
bloody well told; 166 - 169. Daleks - there are
four Dalek operators listed in the credits, so they’re making it onto the list
(presumably all 50,000 Daleks that're hiding on the planet are destroyed, but
they don’t…that would just be silly…and play havoc with my numbering system).
They regress to baby Daleks. Now that I’d love to see. Dalek mutants in
nappies, sucking their dummies. Cute! Then they die!

(The
Daleks exterminate the disseminated mice because they think ‘they might be
hostile’…yeah, because, y’know, I’m sure they were just about to produce
nunchucks from up their furry little arses and beat the living crap out of the
metal gits. The utter fucking bastards [the Daleks’ that is]. Some Visians are
killed by a Dalek patrol at the end of Counter Plot /
beginning of Coronas of the Sun but being invisible
means it’s a bugger to count how many. Perhaps I should include the show itself
on the list here, as some people think it died with the advent of The
Feast of Steven. A number of Egyptians are exterminated upon the
Daleks' arrival in Golden Death, but as to how many is a
complete guess, at a rough estimate I’d say at least half a dozen. Could
someone please find this episode so this anally retentive fanboy can get his
figures right please.)

Score on the TARDIS Doors - 8 -
it’s lazy reviewing to say that this story’s too long, but…this story’s too
long. Everything from The Feast of Steven to The
Abandoned planet is sheer padding. That’s five whole episodes of just
attempting to delay the inevitable final showdown between the Doctor and his
archenemies. Coronas of the Sun marks a complete break in the
on-going narrative and I can’t help but wish we could’ve had another couple of
self-contained stories featuring Sara Kingdom and her travels aboard the TARDIS
before eventually returning to the matter in hand and the resolution of the
Master Plan, instead of having to bugger about with Christmas, the New Year and
a mini-break in Egypt. Dennis Spooner tries his best to keep our interest going
but in so doing completely forgets one of the strongest aspect of Terry
Nation’s earlier script - the potential power struggle between Chen and
Karlton. However, he more than redeems himself in the final couple of episodes.
Despite it being filler, there’s a fantastic atmosphere to The
Abandoned Planet. Effectively, the main protagonists, the Doctor and the
Daleks, mysteriously disappear for the majority of the episode, and as Steven
and Sara wander around the deserted city on Kembel searching for a trace of
their companion, it feels very much as if we’re witnessing the calm before the
storm. The ominousness is almost tangible. As they and Chen begin their descent
into the hidden part of the city at the end of the episode you just know
there’s an epic ending coming up, one which has been more than worth waiting
for. Destruction of Time is a masterpiece. It positively drips
with tension and high drama. It’s possibly one of the best episodes since the
series began. It’s certainly one of the noisiest episodes ever, with the
incidental music, the sound effect of the Time Destructor in operation and
everyone shouting in panic and frustration combining to make it feel as if
suddenly chaos really does reign supreme, all of which reaches a crescendo as
first Sara and then the Daleks either age or regress to their deaths before the
Taranium within the Destructor burns itself out. The silence which follows is
almost deafening. Stunning. Still too bloody long though.

Advetisement: Take care of your skin...