Day 347 — December 13th 2021
Delta and the Bannermen Part Three and Dragonfire Part One
Delta and the Bannermen — Part Three
I’ve spent loads of time this year suggesting that three episodes is the perfect length for a Doctor Who story, because it’s short enough to cut out all the dull padding you usually get in a third episode, but long enough to really explore the story, which is something which was lost in some of the Davison two-parters. So typically, our first three-parter in well over 20 years demonstrates how the format can fall apart, too, because everything feels so incredibly rushed here.
There were signs of this happening in Part Two, and I complained yesterday about the bizarre clash between having to frantically rush some scenes while allowing others plenty of time to breathe, but it gets turned up a few notches in the first half of this one. It means you end up with bizarre situations like Goronwy being so eager to help out in the solution when a group of strangers (including a bright green child!) rock up to his house on a pair of motorbikes.
In Doctor Who Magazine, Steven Moffat suggested that Goronwy might be a future incarnation of Doctor Who who’s retired to the countryside, but if there’s one thing this story doesn’t need then it’s even more plot lines.
Billy is another casualty of everything in this story operating at a breakneck speed, because he’s forced to just go along with every development as it happens. In Part Two he opens the door to discover Delta sat on the bed with a small green alien baby and he doesn’t react at all, because there’s no time to do so. In this episode he’s been dropped off at Goronwy’s house knowing that there’s a bunch of space mercenaries on the way to kill them… but happily sticks on some beekeeping gear to learn all about the creatures. It feels so out of place.
Other faults include Weismuller and Hawk being chained together with a neck brace… only to be set free in the very next scene, because Ray just happens to turn up with an allen key. I reckon the story could stand to lose the Americans entirely, and it would give some of the other elements more time to breathe.
I think this one is at its best in the quieter, more sentimental moments. McCoy and Sara Griffiths work really well against each other, and in the little character moments they really shine. I feel bad for saying yesterday that McCoy isn’t very good when it comes to the big angry parts of the stories, so it’s nice to be reminded that when he’s playing to his strengths then he’s absolutely wonderful.
Doctor Who: ‘I can’t condone this foolishness, but then, love has never
been known for its rationality.’
I’m dropping to a 4/10 for this final episode, and that’s a shame because it showed so much promise early on.
Dragonfire — Part One
An evil dictator, able to freeze people to death with his bare hands, who also happens to be the manager of a branch of Iceland is exactly the kind of bonkers Doctor Who idea that i should absolutely love, but it just doesn’t quite tie together for me. It’s something I’ve joked about with friends in the past but had sort of convinced myself I was making up. I knew that Kane was exiled to a planet which happened to also have a frozen food store, but I thought I’d invented the link between them. Alas, this episode makes it plainly clear that he really is the manager, and it’s not as fun as I’d like it to be.
I think the problem is that I can’t reconcile the two halves of the story. I can appreciate him as a fairly chilling (ho ho) villain in his own right, and Edward Peel puts in a brilliantly menacing performance. I love the way he’s so casually cruel to his slaves — the moment when he orders Glitz’s ship destroyed simply to spite Belazs is brilliant, and another example of them really trying to inject a bit more character at this point in the series.
But then when Belazs goes after Glitz because he’s sold Kane some rotten fruit it all sort of falls apart for me. I assume that he didn’t inspect the merchandise himself but rather had a subordinate do it for him, but it still paints the picture of Kane down in the warehouse signing a delivery note as Glitz unloads the dodgy stock. It undermines all the brilliant work done with the villain elsewhere. I’m hoping the two sides of the story can gel together better as we go through the next two episodes, but I suspect that might be futile.
Still, it’s not all bad. I think I’ve laughed more at this episode than any in ages, and that’s almost exclusively down to Glitz. I especially love the way he purposely misunderstands questions put to him and instead explains his use of language. It happens on a couple of occasions and it god a huge laugh from me on both occasions;
Doctor Who: ‘What’s this, Glitz? Not another one of your dodgy deals backfired?’
Glitz: ‘No, no, nothing like that, straight up. Fact is, I’m on a mission of highly philanthropic nature.’
Mel: ‘What’s that?’
Glitz: ‘It means it’s beneficial to mankind.’
Mel: ‘We know what philanthropic means. What’s the mission?’
The subtitles on BritBox have been pretty rubbish across all Doctor Who so far. They often have a tendency to cut off the last few letters of a word, or the last word of a sentence. Sometimes they flash up for only half a second. Other times they stay on screen for ages, skipping the next few captions. I watched an episode of Catweazle on there last night and somehow the subtitles slipped completely out of synch with the episode, to the point that they were running about three minutes behind. It was great fun, then, when I rolled my eyes at their captioning of Mel saying ‘the Lock [sic] Ness Monster’, only to discover that it had been done on purpose, with Doctor Who correcting her pronunciation! That’s a joke which landed even better because I’m so used to the subtitling being so awful!
Whenever I watch this one I always remember a friend’s favourite part of the story — the moment when Doctor Who glumly accepts that he’s not going to get to go on an adventure;
Doctor Who: ‘I was so looking forward to meeting a dragon…’
Said friend cites this as his favourite McCoy moment of them all, and it’s not hard to see why. He’s great when he thinks he’s off on an adventure, and I love the little smiles of excitement he gives while reading the treasure map. There’s a kind of child-like innocence to him which I think will be lost a little over the next couple of seasons, but is massively endearing here.
5/10
