Day 215 — August 3rd 2021
The Seeds of Doom Parts Three and Four
The Seeds of Doom — Part Three
I said the other day that the opening episodes of The Android Invasion played out more like episodes of The Avengers than Doctor Who, and I think the same is broadly true of this one — although here it’s less The Avengers specifically, rather any ITC action series. Aside from a singe mention of alien life (and even then only loosely, Keeler says ‘according to the Doctor, he turned into an alien’ and leaves it at that) there’s no actual science fiction content in this episode. Instead it’s a lot more about action and general spy series stuff.
Doctor Who and Sarah brush up against corrupt government officials (this sort of thing happened a lot in the Pertwee era, but with the possible exception of Invasion of the Dinosaurs it’s never felt quite like this), and captured by the bad guy’s henchmen, and forced to fight for their lives in an abandoned quarry. And how strange does it feel to see Baker’s Doctor Who somewhere as ordinary as the back of a car?!
The plot is advanced by following clues found in the boot of a car, and they have to connect the dots on their own, without anyone else to help them. They sneak into the bad guy’s house using disguises and cunning, and then run around the grounds giving guards the slip while trying desperately to alert the authorities. If you tuned into this one as your first experience of Doctor Who, you’d get a very different idea of what the show is to the usual.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing — it’s been an enjoyable departure from the normal to see something so different in tone, and it helps that Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen are such competent leads that I could watch the pair of them doing pretty much anything and still find things to enjoy. This episode is also home to one of my absolute favourite bits of dialogue from Doctor Who;
Harrison Chase: ‘So, the meddling Doctor. You lead a charmed life. You arrive without a chauffeur, not even a touch of frostbite.’
Doctor Who: ‘How do you do. Have you met Miss Smith? She’s my best friend. ’
Harrison Chase: ‘Is she? And still beautifully intact, I see.’
Sarah: ‘I try my best, under the circumstances.’
When the BBC first announced that Jodie Whittaker’s co-stars in Season Eleven were to be called her ‘friends’ rather than her ‘companions’ there was a bit of grumbling in fandom, but I have to admit that I’ve never had any issue with that — the people Doctor Who travels with are his friends. I think they’re probably all his best friend, but Sarah Jane is absolutely his best friend of them all.
That moment I’ve quoted above is one of my favourite parts of the episode, and not just because it makes me smile about their friendship. It’s the way he continues on from there, with a gun pointed at his head, being as irreverent as he ever has been;
Doctor Who: ‘And this is Mister Scorby. I don’t know his first name. And these two gentlemen…’
Harrison Chase: ‘Yes, thank you, Doctor, we are acquainted.’
Doctor Who: ‘How nice. Hand over the pod.’
I went on at great length yesterday about the way Doctor Who has been written in this story, swinging from being outranged and angry one minute to cheerful and silly the next, and while this episode continues that trend I think it leans further to the latter, and that’s no bad thing. I love him snapping at Sir Colin (‘It’ll be the end of everything. Everything, you understand? Even your pension!’), and there’s something visually funny about seeing him dressed up as a chauffeur, but that might just be because Tom Baker has such an interesting look to him.
He’s not the only source of comedy in this episode, because we’re also introduced to Amelia Ducat, and isn’t she just fabulous right from the off? It seems strange to see someone smoking in the show at this point (was Roger Delgado the last person we saw doing so, right back in Season Eight?) but it feels so perfectly right for her, and I laughed harder at her reaction to Doctor Who’s discovery of the painting in the back of a car than I really should have;
Doctor Who: ‘No. We found it in a car boot.’
Amelia Ducat: ‘A car boot?’
Doctor Who: ‘A Daimler car boot.’
Amelia Ducat: ‘The car is immaterial!’
I think we needed a slightly lighter-hearted episode after the previous two have been so intense, and it’s allowed the story to breathe a little. I suspect you couldn’t have maintained the tension of Parts One and Two across a full six episodes, so it’s nice to step back, take stock, and prepare to launch back into the action with the next episode. All the same, I’d never accuse this of being a ‘typical’ Part Three, because it’s packed with great material, and it’s never dull.
I’m going with an 8/10 for this one, but it’s pushing slightly higher…
Oh, and one final thing; how brilliant is it to see Doctor Who and Sarah Jane outside the main reception at Television Centre, which doubles here as the location for the World Ecology Bureau? There’s something oddly magical about seeing them there, almost to the point where I want to watch an episode where the TARDIS arrives right in the middle of the donut.
The Seeds of Doom — Part Four
This must be one of the most violent Doctor Who stories ever. Almost every character is holding a gun, and the majority of them seem to get the opportunity to use them. Even Doctor Who is toting a pistol in this one. When they did that earlier in the season it was used as an indication that we were looking at an ‘evil’ version of our hero: the proof that he was the android rather than the Time Lord. Here, though, he uses it to threaten the bad guys as part of a plan to help Sarah escape their custody. You get the sense that the stakes must be incredibly high for him to have gone so far.
And then they turn the situation on its head. I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of Doctor Who using a gun unless he really needs to, and it feels like something they’ve been relying on more and more this season (variations on the theme crop up in the aforementioned Android Invasion and in Planet of Evil), so when it first happened here I did have a pang of ‘here we go again’. But then Sarah reaffirms my faith in our hero;
Sarah: ‘You can’t tackle them single-handed.’
Doctor Who: ‘Why not? I’ve got a pistol.’
Sarah: ‘But you’d never use it.’
Doctor Who: ‘True, but they don’t know that, do they.’
But it’s not only the amount of gun-toting characters which makes this story feel so violent. You’ve the fact that a large chunk of the guest cast are killed off at the end of Part Two in a spectacular explosion, and the story has to entirely relocate to continue. The threat of Doctor Who being destroyed by the Composter is genuinely quite horrifying, and Chase’s description of what could happen is sure to have left an impression in the minds of kids watching;
Harrison Chase: ‘I shall set the machine on automatic control, which means it will start up again in a few minutes time. Your death will be agonising, Doctor, but mercifully quick.’
Doctor Who: ‘What can I say?’
Harrison Chase: ‘Blood and bone contain the most valuable nitrogen elements. Just think. After shredding, your remains will pass automatically through my compost acceleration chamber and within twenty five minutes you will be pumped into the garden to become part of nature’s grand design.’
Doctor Who: ‘I still can’t think of anything to say.’
Several of the characters in this one are proper nasty. When Scorby first takes Doctor Who into the Composter Room he does so with such force that the Time Lord goes flying into a pile of bins. Tom Baker does the stunt himself, and it looks like it might genuinely have hurt. As he tries to stand he’s forced roughly back down, and it’s really striking to see our lead character — who’d usually so in control — being beaten like this.
The other day a friend messaged me about my thoughts on Pyramids of Mars, and said that he thought Doctor Who being tortured by Sutekh was one of the scariest moments in the whole show. I conceded that it was a great performance from Tom Baker (still par for the course at this stage) but that because I didn’t believe in the threat posed by Sutekh, it just didn’t do a lot for me. I’m far more frightened of Doctor Who being in pain here than I was there. There’s something about the fact that he’s being beaten up by a human — a bully — that makes it hit so much closer to home. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen him being beaten up quite like this, and it’s all the more effective as a result.
And then you’ve got Harrison Chase himself, who’s never quite as outwardly nasty as his lackeys, but who’s sinister and evil in a different way. I love a good camp villain, and Tony Beckley plays it to perfection. I think my favourite Chase moment so far was in Part Three, when he learns that the Antarctic base has been destroyed, along with all the people and equipment inside. ‘What a pity. I could have had two pods…’ he says.
Thankfully there are some nice characters on display here. I cheered when Ducat arrived at the main gate, because I thought we may have seen the last of her during a fleeting appearance in the last episode. I love that Sarah is forced to use her as a means to contact London, and I love even more that Ducat was already ahead of the game, and had Sir Colin waiting outside in the car. I really wasn’t expecting it, and it’s always a good thing when I don’t see a twist coming.
Even Dunbar is switching sides in this one, realising the mistake he made in selling himself to Chase in the first place. It feels like there’s considerably more character development in this story than we’d usually get in Doctor Who, and they’re using the addition of two extra episodes to really make the most of the time afforded to them. I’ve spoken before about taking characters and letting us see them though different lenses, but as much as I’ve been enjoying the series lately there’s not always time for that.
In spite of all this good stuff, I can feel the story sagging a little in the middle. I said that I couldn’t accuse Part Three of being a typical third episode, filled with lots of padding, and while there’s a lot going on in this one it feels closer to that — I found myself checking the time remaining at one point, and that’s not happened with the earlier episodes of the tale. It means that I’m starting to notice little mistakes which I’d otherwise be ignoring — Sarah doesn’t initially know what’s happened to Keeler when she discovers him, but he later points out that she’s seen it happen to Winlett already.
And then there’s the cliffhanger, which I have to admit looks like the kind of silly, wobbling rubber monster that everyone expects to show up in Doctor Who. It’s certainly the weakest form of the Krynoid so far, and that’s a shame because there’s an earlier shot of the creature tied up in bed which looks proper scary, helped by some effective direction in the shadows.
I’m dropping to a 7/10 for this one, and hoping it can pull it all together for a satisfactory ending tomorrow…
