Day 116 — April 26th 2021
The Krotons Episodes One and Two
The Krotons — Episode One
There used to be a second hand bookshop in Norwich which also sold used DVDs, and all along the top shelf, running the entire length of the shop, was a seemingly endless run of Doctor Who VHS tapes. I loved that shop. It was right down the end of a long road about as far as you could walk from the city centre as possible. It felt like a secret, and the tapes were a gateway into the world of old Doctor Who. I know I bought loads of my tapes from there, although The Krotons is the only one I can pinpoint with any certainty, because it was in a cardboard sleeve rather than a plastic case, and thus always stood out.
Oddly, I’m sure I didn’t watch the tape at all, and waited to see The Krotons when the DVD came out years later. It wasn’t a story that massively appealed to me — sandwiched between the epic 8-part Cyberman adventure and the return of the Ice Warriors. It didn’t have the decency to be wiped, so lacked that sort of mystique. It’s the only four-part story broadcast in the final two years of the 1960s, and somehow that seems to cut it adrift a little.
It’s a bit like The Savages — a story that everyone sort of forgets. And having watched this first episode only about an hour ago I can confirm that it is almost entirely forgettable. It suffers by following The Invasion, which makes this opening episode feel like a long drawn-out slog, lacking the incident and excitement which characterised that story.
In many ways this feels like another throwback to the Hartnell era, and the society of terribly earnest Gonds wouldn’t feel out of place in Season Two. I’m not surprised to discover that a version of this story was pitched to the programme in 1965.
I think the big issue with them is that they’re just so dull. We get lengthy lectures today about the Learning Hall and the history of their planet (so dull it isn’t even named on screen), but I can’t claim to care about any of what we’re told. Even Jamie’s rather tame fight with one of the locals feels like the kind of fight that Ian used to engage in every so often.
I’m not entirely certain, but I think the copy of this story on BritBox might be unrestored, too, which doesn’t help matters. It certainly seems more washed out and flat than I’ve been used to over the last few episodes. Sometimes it’s nice to see things closer to the way they might have originally looked, but it just acted as another barrier for my enjoyment on this occasion.
It’s not all doom and gloom, and you’ll be pleased to know that I do have some nice things to say about this episode.
When the TARDIS materialises in the quarry — sorry, alien planet — I made a note that they’d used the model prop and assumed that they’d then cut to the full-size box for the arrival of the crew. But then the door opens and they step out! It’s not the model at all, the location really is that big.
We don’t get a lot of other material shot on location in this episode but what we do get continues to be pretty nice, and to sell the scale of this world. There’s a particularly nice shot of Doctor Who larking about with his umbrella while Jamie and Zoe help each other navigate the terrain in the background. I can totally buy that they’re on another planet in that moment and all my moaning yesterday about having not really taken to Zoe yet is washed away, because they’ve very much a team here.
Overall, though, this isn’t one of Doctor Who’s better episodes. A cautious 4/10 for now, I think.
The Krotons — Episode Two
I’ve said before that last time I did a marathon I found myself really sick of Jamie by the end of Season Six. I’m pleased to report that I’m not getting the same vibe this time around, but this time I think I’m feeling a bit sorry for him. Jamie was shot in the leg towards the end of The Invasion and largely absent from the final episode, and here he’s again mostly side-lined. Doctor Who doesn’t even try to hide it — he fobs him off with an excuse and sets off to have some adventure.
Poor Jamie. Maybe Doctor Who’s getting a bit sick of him instead?
Jamie’s loss is Zoe’s gain, though, and this is by far her best episode so far. It gives her a real chance to shine, and really makes the most of her super intelligence (‘Zoe is something of a genius. It can be very irritating at times…’), and it manages to make her arrogance endearing again. I actually laughed when she described Doctor Who as ‘almost as clever as I am’.
It should come as no surprise that the secret to making Zoe work was to pair Wendy Padbury up with Patrick Troughton and let them do all the comedy stuff which is usually reserved for ‘the boys’. I found their exchange while Doctor Who tries to get the hand of the Kroton’s Learning Machine genuinely hilarious;
Zoe: ‘Oh, sit down and put this headset on. And press the button. Press the button!’
Doctor Who: ‘All right, there’s no need to shout! Now go away and don’t fuss me. No, come back. What’s this? It’s all right, I know. Right, fire away. I’m ready.’
Zoe: ‘Oh. Doctor, you’ve got it all wrong.’
In a couple of week’s time I’ll be entering a phase of the programme which broadly prefers pairing off Doctor Who with a single companion rather than a team. It’s an idea which feels a bit alien at this stage (The Massacre is the only real example we’ve had so far), but seeing how well Troughton’s Doctor Who works when alone with either Jamie or Zoe makes you realise how well that can work. I think you can sense Terrance Dicks behind the scenes here making notes for the future. The Invasion was a success, so do more stories like that. Doctor Who and a single companion works nicely, so make that the norm as well.
The direction of this episode is a bit all over the place, and I really don’t know what to make of it. You get some moments — like the trippy sequence in which Doctor Who and Zoe are exposed to the Kroton’s torture — which are really effective, and so unlike anything the series has ever done before (or will do again), but then you get occasional fumbles like the reveal of the Krotons.
By which I mean… there isn’t really a reveal for the Krotons. You see bits of them in close up as a tease for much of the episode and then there’s one just sort of… there. There’s no attempt to make our first look at the new monsters feel like any sort of event and that’s a shame. This is David Maloney’s second outing as a director for the series (The Mind Robber was his debut) and i don’t think it’s a particularly auspicious start. I know he’ll go on to great things, but it’s tricky to see it from some of this episode alone.
Considerably better than the first episode — largely thanks to the injection of humour — but it’s still not really shining for me. A 5/10.
