By Roy Mathur, on 2025-04-13, at 23:36:02 to 00:38:15 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
This is my second attempt at taping this episode. The first was bodged with very low volume and drenched in room reverb because I'd forgotten to plug the line-in cable back after a soundcheck on Friday.
Notable Cast: Sixth Doctor: Colin Baker, Peri Brown: Nicola Bryant, Jobel: Clive Swift (later Mrs Bucket's long-suffering husband in Keeping Up Appearances), DJ: Alexei Sayle (stand-up comedian, actor, esp. The Young Ones)
Director: Graeme Harper (also New Who)
Writer: Eric Saward (DW script editor and scriptwriter for The Visitation, Earthshock, Resurrection of the Daleks)
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Location: BBC Television Centre, Shepherd's Bush, TARDIS lands at Bolinge Hill Farm, Tranquil Repose exteriors at IBM building, and Peri finds plants at Buster Hill, mutant attack at Queen Elizabeth Country Park, Hampshire, Peri climbs at Goodwood estate and Orcini shoots Dalek at aerodrome in Tangmere, Sussex in 1985
Broadcast: Story 142, season 22, serial 6 (finale), following Timelash (572), 2 x c. 45 min, 23--30 Mar 1985
Media: BBC Books novelization by Eric Saward in 2019, Target novelization in 2021, VHS 1999, 2001, DVD 2005, Blu-ray 2022, BBC iPlayer since 1 Nov 2023
Easy Love by Philip Bailey with Phil Collins is boring me to sleep as the UK no. 1 single.
Say goodbye to any audio clips, trailers, etc. forever, thanks to a petty copyright strike from Spotify (via the BBC) regarding episode 90.
Spotify haven't updated my feed in a year, so why do I care? I'm worried it may portend unpleasantries to come. What happens if Apple and/or Archive.org is on my back next? Podcast cover art? Blog images? I can't possibly re-edit that much content! First YouTube, now podcasting, what next, air?
Peri and the Doctor arrive on Necros wearing blue outfits because, the Doctor says, "...Blue is the official colour of mourning on Necros, and women's legs to be covered at all times." He continues to say that they have come to meet, "...Arthur Stengos. One of the finest agronomists in the galaxy." Ever the botanist, Peri picks an interesting flower and they are suddenly attacked by a diseased man, who Peri inadvertently bludgeons to death while rescuing the Doctor.
At Tranquil Repose's, Chapel of Rest, chief embalmer Jobel and his crew are finalising preparations for the funeral of an elaborately prepared body of a woman, while an armed woman and man sneak past them. They are on a mission to rescue the woman's father, Arthur Stengos, from suspended animation. To their horror, they find Stengos's head alive, horribly mutated, and encased within a transparent Dalek shell. When she mercy-kills Stengnos, they are imprisoned in the same cell as the Doctor, who was captured while investigating the facility. Eventually, they are freed by an assassin called Orsini. Peri, pursued by an over-amorous Jobel, escapes into the studio of a DJ, whose job it is to entertain clients while they are in suspended animation.
Lurking in a secret hideout within the catacombs is Davros and his Daleks. He is engaged in a project to convert humans into Daleks and funding his research by selling protein harvested from dead bodies through his representative, Kara. Kara has hired Orcini to assassinate Davros to take back control of her company. He fails to shoot Davros, and when another faction of Daleks under the Supreme Dalek arrive to take Davros away for execution, he again fails to kill him with a bomb. The explosion shakes the building, but the Doctor and Peri live. He tells the survivors to harvest the blue flower for protein and they leave, this time to, "somewhere fun?" Peri asks hopefully. He ends his reply with, "...All right, I'll take you to---".
It takes far too long for the Doctor and Peri to enter Tranquil Repose, and then only by the end of the first episode.
The Audio is occasionally very difficult to hear as the FX track seems too loud compared to the dialogue track.
Visiting a planet just to see and agronomist might be appropriate given that Peri is a botanist, but I can't think of a more boring plot point in science fiction.
I feel sorry for how Peri is written so weak and pathetic, especially in comparison to strong females like the boss of the facility; ruthless and conniving Kara (Eleanor Bron) and Stengos's hardbitten daughter (Bridget Lynch-Blosse).
Just as the previous two stories are mostly blotted from my memory of first viewing them in 1985, except for the presence of Jacqueline Pearce and Paul Darrow, this one is similar in that all I can remember is Alexei Sayle's obnoxious space DJ. His OTT, Max Headroom/Radio Caroline pirate jock's zany behaviour seems better suited to HHGTTG. I like Alexei Sayle's comedy, but getting value for money from their guest star, means he is on the screen too often, overpowering the script with his scenery-chewing to the point that the cliched hyper DJ shtick becomes tedious in the extreme. Bizarrely, homesick Peri likes him because he sounds American. In his favour, he kills Daleks with the power of his rock'n'roll gun. (None of that is a metaphor). He says, "This is a highly directional ultrasonic beam of rock and roll."
I was surprised to find camp embalmer Jobel actually fancies the ladies and creeps Peri out with his insistent advances.
As with Paul Darrow's Tekker in Timelash, Jobel is similarly bewigged, but unlike Tekker's it is played for laughs when it falls off in his death scene.
William Gaunt's noble assassin and knight of Oberon, Orcini, is similar in looks, temperament, and in wanting to do the right thing at the end as Lytton (Maurice Colbourne) in Attack of the Cybermen. Gaunt also reminds me a little of Ian McKellen.
Just when the Doctor seems to have calmed his monstrously diseased attacker with hypnotism, he asks "Now, how can I help you?", whereupon he is set upon. It had me giggling in delight.
After Colin Baker's mockery of Anthony Ainley's gaffs in The Mark of the Rani, I feel it only fair to point out that Baker mispronounces "sepulchre" as "sepulcher".
The Doctor seeing his own memorial is reminiscent of New Who's Trenzalore episodes, but much funnier as he is almost crushed by it. When he survives, Jobel says, "...it would take a mountain to crush an ego like yours."
The set dressing of Tranquil Repose's Chapel of Rest and the catacombs are a cultural fusion of Hindu, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artifacts, giving it an air of timelessness. The sets are colourful with the golds and purples. Even the Daleks add to the richness. One is white and gold, while the experimental Daleks are transparent, so as to better see the organic mess within. It's a nice contrast to the blandness of Timelash before it. The cherry on top are the sci-fi futuristic exterior shots of Tranquil Repose filmed at the excellently chosen IBM North Harbour Building in Portsmouth.
The prop assault rifle used by the medical doctor is a blank firing Austrian Steyr AUG A3, spent cartridges rapidly ejecting from the side---with a few token science fictiony greeblies tacked on almost as an afterthought---because the future had caught up with us. I remember seeing its slick, futuristic looks, like something designed in a wind tunnel, favoured in many sci-fi productions of the time. Talking guns, Orsini, against his squire's advice, wields an antique, for them, though modern fore us, chromed machine pistol.
While the scarred emperor-like mad scientist, Davros, preceded Star Wars, this 1985 story directly steals from 1983's Return of the Jedi. Davros can now exude Sith-like force lightening from his fingertips. Davro's hideous head decoy wired into a cylinder also reminds me contextually of the horrid remains of Palpatine on Exegol in the much later The Rise of Skywalker.
The moment I hear that the funeral planet is a source of protein, of course my mind went to Soylent Green's famous line uttered by an incredulous Charlton Heston, "Soylent Green is made out of people." It was a very obvious plot point ripped straight from the 1973 film, which Saward denies. Of course he does, which gets my goat, considering the trouble a tiny bit of fair use audio has caused me recently.
The finale of the season has great sci-fi locations and nice looking set dressing and props, nasty body horror disease and organ effects, lots of action; including Davros's hand blown being off, some nice model spaceship and explosion scenes, and a BFG powered by rock'n'roll. It was an expensive looking production, featuring the return of our favourite and most iconic Doctor Who foes in a grisly plot, with the expectation of a "fun" adventure next season.
Snow delayed filming and changed locations. (BBC, The Fourth Dimension)
Referring to Howe, walker, and Stammer's Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Production of Doctor Who, let's hear from Eric Saward, "I went away to Rhodes...and wrote the scripts. I wanted...something about a planet that specialised in dealing with the dead." He goes on to say how his holiday influenced him to chose names of certain characters. Kara: "Cara was a type of potato" and "Stengos ran the local ferry." Orcini was a historical local war hero.
Thanks to too much on my plate, too many stressors, and an exhausting week, I'm tired, done too much, have too much still to do, and have had too little sleep. Chores, chores, chores... never-ending chores.
There was also a trip to London yesterday and then Ncuti Gatwa's new season of New Who, that I have to digest and add to my shownotes, and which you can enjoy... soon.