By Roy Mathur, on 2024-12-24, at 23:11:16 to 23:52:18 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Christmas became the usual stressful disaster. I am very tired and Andy bloody Williams can get stuffed. Let's not talk about it and celebrate Christmas Eve.
Now you have to pay for Twitter analytics? Bugger that. Find me on Mastodon instead.
Yesterday's Shure SM58 experiment was not fruitful, but I'm still using it anyway because it's like that game, Animal Upon Animal in the lab. Yet again, I've decided to let the Shure SM7B have a nap until I have more space.
I revisited this back in pod 159 in 2016. Here's a summary, paraphrasing those old shownotes, correcting the many glaring errors, which you'll hear if you listen to 159 (sorry, I was a bad Whovian then), and appending my own seceond-viewing notes.
Written by Terrance Dicks (novelisation by Malcolm Hulke), directed by David Maloney, produced by Derrick Sherwin. This 10-parter is story 50, serial seven of season six broadcast from 19 April 1969 to 21 June 1969. It is the final adventure for the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines), and Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury). The War Lord (Philip Madoc) and the War Chief have other DW credits, but Madoc also played Doctor Solon in The Brain of Morbius. There was also the familiar Vernon Dobtcheff and James Bree, and one of the Union soldiers was Rudolph Walker of Love Thy Neighbour and Eastenders
They land in the WWI, except it's not really because the world is divided into war zones populated by soldiers from different earth wars through history. An alien, the War Lord, and his men are running the show with the help of the War Chief, a power-mad renegade Time Lord. They plan to train, condition, and program humans (the most vicious species) to form a galaxy conquering army. The Doctor helps the human resistance take down the War Lord and the War Chief is killed by the War Lord's men. Unfortunately, in order to rescue the humans he calls the Time Lords, who judge the Doctor and the War Lord. The War Lord and his men are executed and their planet isolated forever. Jamie and Zoe are returned to their respective times with only the memories of their first adventure with the Doctor. The Doctor is exiled to twentieth century earth in his next regeneration and without access to a TARDIS.
The War Chief, for some reason, did not regenerate and dies when he was shot. He was a prototype for the Master; his evil and lust for power was very similar. The War Chief dialogue was very reminiscent of Darth Vader when he says, "We are going to bring a new order to the galaxy, one United Galactic Empire." Unlike the Meddling Monk, we finally saw Time Lords in their home environment (but no hats). We learned of their knowledge, power, and ruthlessness. The acting was sometimes amateur, particularly the ambulance woman and the lieutenant (her cardboard reaction to her comrade's supposed death). Jamie, a soldier, was oddly useless at avoiding being blown up on the battlefield. The combination of fascist/communist-style uniforms and the sculpted beards of the War Lord and War Chief and made the baddies look cool; I'm sure Lemmmy Kilmister would approve, and even their shiny black utilitarian SIDRAT (pronounced weirdly, "side-rat"; bloody actors) time ships conveyed a sense of menace. Absorbing, not overwhelming for a 10-parter, neatly wrapped, and I very much enjoyed seeing Troughton's bumbling kindly, but cunning, Doctor again.
While not overly bloated, shortening it to a more manageable 90 minute fast-paced film was welcome, though I did notice some rough cuts, like the Doctor abruptly released from jail. The CGI extras (if they were extras, I'm not one for behind-the-scenes extras, so er...? Gods, I'm lazy), colourisation, cleaning up, and dramatic music were dynamic and really drove the narrative.
Trivia-wise, I found the story reminiscent of Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright comics. The evil War Lord and his men were like the multi-dimensional villainous Disruptors and the Time Lords like the good guys from parallel Zero Zero. The meditating Doctor reminded me of Luther, frequently in a similar pose.
New Who this time. The Ncuti Gatwa Christmas Special will be on BBC 1 on Christmas Day at 17:10 and is called... I don't want to know. I think "Joy" is in the title, though I looked at the listing with my eyes half-closed to minimise spoilers. I'll talk about soon.
Into 2025, I plan to continue my revisit of classic Doctor Who.