The Three Doctors is a load of old tat, according to conventional wisdom. However some people say the same about The Five Doctors and the entire Pertwee era. Personally I think it's a genuinely strong story. It has great characters and some of Doctor Who's best comedy... in all seriousness, I laughed more at The Three Doctors than I did at City of Death. Gellguards aside, what's not to like? Admittedly it looks silly, but we're Doctor Who fans. We should be able to see past that.

The reason to watch episodes 1-3 is the comedy between the regulars, who are fantastic. Dr Tyler and Sam Whatsit don't add much (although I loved Sam's last line at the end of episode four), but they don't matter. The Three Doctors knows who its stars are and cuts back everything else to maximise their screen time.

Troughton doesn't exactly underplay his role, but that wasn't his specialty in the 1960s either. The always-impressive Nicholas Courtney makes good lines look fantastic... this is famously the Brigadier's "I'm pretty sure that's Cromer" story, but somehow he actually avoids looking like an idiot. He's wrong, but for character-based reasons rather than plain stupidity. Nick Courtney gives us a man who's always found the Doctor trying but is now discovering that Troughton could give even Pertwee lessons in stretching your patience. The Doctors work together wonderfully, of course. Troughton and Pertwee were both masters of comic acting, while there's a freshness to their scenes since their Doctors had never previously had to operate in anything like this kind of relationship.

William Hartnell is okay. Sadly the poor man's condition meant that he had to read his lines off a cue card and only appear on a monitor, which simplified the plot but means that his Doctor has none of the force and power of which Hartnell was perfectly capable. He also looks strange on the TARDIS scanner. He's orange. He gets a good line or two, but as a performance it's pretty sad compared to his usual standards.

Benton makes a good companion, incidentally. Like Jo Grant, the character has an endearing "I may not be very bright but I'm doing my best" earnestness about him. I'm also glad that Richard Franklin took time off to direct a play, because Captain Yates was the one UNIT regular who hadn't met Troughton and he might have diluted the byplay.

The story's other big plus is Omega, who's a wonderful creation. I'm tempted to call him Doctor Who's finest villain, a Shakespearian figure of tragedy and complexity. The Master and often even Davros are simply evil. They appear in better stories than poor Omega, but they're rent-a-baddies who can be inserted into a random script and left to get on with their latest Plan For World Domination. However I wasn't kidding when I called Omega Shakespearian. He's like Prospero's deranged twin, if he'd been stranded on his island for ten million years. We feel his tragedy. He earns our sympathy even when we realise that he's become a ranting monster intent on destroying everything.

Omega's story is the most iconic in Doctor Who's mythology, but he's not just an eye-catching high concept. The character has depth and complexity too. Stephen Thorne manages to fit a surprising amount of naturalism into a performance that's necessarily full of declamation, theatricality and over-the-top ranting. Compare with Season Sixteen's godawful Pirate Captain for instance. You never doubt the power, grandeur and insanity of the man, but at the same time he feels real. His childishness extends beyond those temper tantrums. When he's thwarted, he almost cries! I love the way Stephen Thorne puts a crack in his voice at that point. I now want to rewatch Arc of Infinity, especially Davison's performance as Omega in its final episode, and those aren't words you'll hear too often. He even has a personification of the dark side of his mind! On top of that part four's revelation is a great SF twist, giving Omega yet another black irony.

The obvious comparison with The Three Doctors is The Wizard of Oz (but this time there really isn't a man behind the curtain, ho ho), but I'm going to suggest The Tempest. Both stories are about an exiled king-in-waiting who becomes a wizard and creates a magical storm to summon his usurpers to his island. Both are full of magic, or at least the Doctor Who technobabble equivalent. Both are more interested in character and theatricality than plot.

The Gallifrey scenes are okay. In episode one they're ghastly, pissing away any grandeur the story might have had with horrible technobabbly dialogue and po-faced uncomprehending delivery, but things improve in later episodes when we can see how much trouble they're in. Incidentally two of the three actors credited here as Time Lords had also played such parts previously. Clyde Pollitt was in The War Games and Graham Leaman was in Colony in Space. The better-known example of The Deadly Assassin's Chancellor Goth also being in The War Games was just a coincidence, Bernard Horsfall being one of David Maloney's favourite actors. All four of his Doctor Who roles were in Maloney-directed stories! However it seems clear that here Lennie Mayne was deliberately casting former Time Lords.

We see some minor traditions of multi-Doctor stories.

1 - Bessie will get teleported along with the 3rd Doctor.

2 - One of the Doctors will get trapped on a TV screen, thus freeing up story space for the others.

3 - It's always the latest incarnation who does the actual investigation. He's still the hero. His predecessors are just colourful guest stars.

I adore the Gellguards. The weird multicoloured blob is freaky enough to look effective, but the Gellguards are hilarious. You'd think you were watching a Graham Williams story. For a man who so obviously loves theatricality and impressive costumes, Omega has a mysterious tendency to make goofy monsters. Scarily the Ergon was an improvement! Admittedly the Gellguards look pretty in close-up, with the colours on that bubbly oil slick surface, but in motion... oh my. It's the way they bounce as they wobble forwards.

However on the plus side, the singularity technobabble makes sense! The laws of physics really do go peculiar at the heart of a black hole, so it's not unreasonable for Omega to be exploiting those peculiar properties... especially since those are the exact forces he'd harnessed aeons ago to create the Time Lords.

I also love part one's cliffhanger. The Doctors know what they have to do as soon as Hartnell tells them about the bridge, but they mess around with comedy coin-tossing and we think it's just a bit of fun... until Pertwee walks outside and LETS THE MONSTER EAT HIM.

The Doctor's exile being rescinded is a nice touch, but it would have been more meaningful if by then he hadn't had full control over the TARDIS anyway. Season Seven's production team played fair with the Doctor's exile, but by the time of The Time Monster the TARDIS was seemingly as free as a bird. Had they still been taking that seriously, the production team might have realised that they missed an opportunity in this story. Troughton presumably didn't have Pertwee's memory blocks. They could have had comedy with one Doctor being reliant on the other to fly his own TARDIS, or possibly even stealing back his knowledge of temporal physics through telepathic contact with his previous self.

Like The Five Doctors, this story is underrated. It looks and feels like glittery nonsense, but it has Omega, a great cast and some of Doctor Who's best comedy. Admittedly the story doesn't move quickly, but that was the format under Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts. Even the good Pertwee-era stories can be tortoise-like. Seriously, I was impressed.

Spearhead from Space' is an enjoyable and stylish start to the Pertwee era. The story not only successfully introduces the main character traits of the new Doctor, but also makes a clean break from the 1960s era of the television programme. Fine performances from most of the cast, excellent directing, the extensive location filming, a good script, and numerous touches of humour combine to create an entertaining and not-entirely-unconvincing story despite the B-movie plot it partly shares with the 1966 film 'Invasion'.

Whereas much of 1960s Doctor Who feels like televised theatre (or, at its worst, pantomime), 'Spearhead from Space' is a more of a movie on the small screen. The serial clearly benefits from being recorded on film with a considerable amount of shooting on location. But it also has a faster pace than earlier Doctor Who and more creative camera work.

Jon Pertwee does a good job of portraying his new character despite having relatively little dialogue in the first half of the story. His Doctor is clearly more action-oriented even than his immediate predecessor, still eccentric but softened by a debonair charm. The only fault I can find with Pertwee's performance is that he occasionally resorts to clownish grimaces – witness his facial expressions when shot at the end of episode one, or when attacked by the tentacles in episode four. Nicholas Courtney also puts in a convincing turn as the Brigadier, who although clearly a man-in-charge can be diplomatic and is open to suggestions. Of the regular cast, only Caroline John fails to convince in her role but this is partly the fault of the script, which fails to supply dialogue that portrays her as the experienced and well-qualified scientist she is meant to be. Because she is a woman she is soon shoe-horned into the role of pretty, young assistant for the much older Doctor. Still, her initial air of arrogance and clear displeasure at the Brigadier's sexist comments marks her as a more mature and realistic character than most of the previous female companions.

The supporting characters are generally well-served both by the script and the actors. Hugh Burden is excellent in his portrayal of an outwardly human character with a disturbing and somewhat chilling mien. Anthony Webb supplies a convincing Dr. Henderson, while John Breslin manages to rise above the usual stereotypes for his second-in-command Captain Munro. Both John Woodnut and Derek Smee are also fairly successful at avoiding typical B-movie characterisation, despite one or two lapses. Unfortunately, the characters of Sam Seeley and his wife Meg seem to have been left over from an early script for 'Invasion' (presumably) supplied to Hammer films

The locations are generally used to good effect by the director. The plastics factory is entirely plausible and even the BBC building is passable as UNIT headquarters. I wasn't convinced, though, by the hospital interior, which with its surfeit of wood panelling looks more like a country hotel. On the other hand, the special effects and some of the design work is rather poor. Applying paint to the faces of the actors portraying certain of the autons works surprisingly well, but the plastic faces of the others are a little too crude and the eye holes are inexplicable (except, of course, to enable the actors to see where they are going). Furthermore, when Channing orders, ''total destruction'' I expected something more spectacular to happen to the victims of the autons' weapons than simply to disappear between frames. Still, the scene where the shop-dummy autons awaken and attack the terrified inhabitants of London is handled well enough to instil some suspense to the proceedings. The shot of the Nestene pods descending to earth is mercifully brief, but alas those green, rubber tentacles are allowed to writhe around for far too long. Given the fact that they are totally unnecessary to the plot, and Jon Pertwee's accompanying facial expression is so ludicrous, they take the prize for comic low-budget production moment of the story.

Yet another classic example of fan nostalgia versus actual story content. 

Don't get me wrong, here, "Sea Devils" is not completely awful. It's more so a case of not being half as good (in my view, at least) as the fanboys who grew up in that era try to make it out to be. I am frequently amused by the complaints levelled at 80s Who (the era I grew up with) since so much of the problems that fans had with stories in this time period exist in equal or oftentimes greater abundance in 70s stories like the "Sea Devils". But these problems seem, for the most part, to go unnoticed by most of fandom because this is the great "uncriticizable" golden era of Doctor Who. 

First off, we'll start with what I notice most in any form of entertainment I watch: the actual story. Next to big bad Robby Holmes himself, Malcolm Hulke is my second-favourite writer for the original series. His scripts were, oftentimes, the most maturely-written three-dimensional stories the show ever produced. But here, Malcolm falls a bit short. He really gives us a pretty threadbare plotline that could barely stand up to a four episode format - forget that he's been given a six-parter! So, to try to fill the gaps, he gives us lots of captures and escapes (not something that is entirely new to the series, of course, but boy does he lay it on heavy here) and attempts at cheap thrills that look even cheaper, these days, because the story is now 30 years old. This makes my disappointment in the story all the more poignant. I expected so much more from the pen of such a great author. 

He also delivers a few really big wallops of super-shaky plotting. The most obvious one being his apparent hope that we will forget basic geography as the episodes progress. The Master is supposed to be imprisoned out on an island that seems to only be accessible by boat. Yet, everyone, by episode three, seems to be zipping back and forth to the prison via land rovers. How exactly did this happen? Did a bridge get built somewhere between episodes? Yes, bad plotting is something that can happen in Who-scripts sometimes - particularly since it is an episode-based series. But this error, to me, borders on the unforgivable. Didn't someone in production pick up on this problem? Obviously not, since there are some other wobbly plot elements littering the script - (another one being just how long the Master is able to sit around not unplugging a highly disruptive machine that is totally screwing over the Sea-Devils in episode six!) - this whole "island that is not" issue is just one of the bigger ones! 

Equally shaky are some of his characterisations. Trenchard's alliance with the Master seems completely unbelievable - even if he is supposed to be something of a fool (which gets me to wonder, right there, why the British government would put such a bumbler in charge of keeping an eye on a criminal mastermind who is so dangerous that he got his own special prison). It's barely stated as to why he is even letting the Master do what he's doing. We get some vague sense that the Master has appealed to his sense of patriotism and perhaps his desire for glory. But it almost seems more like it was just Malcolm going along with that notorious "Pertwee-era formulae". The Master always recruits someone from Earth to help him execute his plans so, this time, it's Trenchard. And we're just supposed to accept that cause that's the way the formula works. Quit looking too hard at the plot, little fanboy, just enjoy the formulae. Which is still my biggest qualm with much of what was done in the Pertwee era. 

This problem persists through most of this story. Even the Master's motivation to re-awaken the Sea Devils seems kind of inconsistent and even somewhat preposterous. If this were the more mean and twisted Ainley Master, I might be able to accept what he was up to. Because the Ainley Master had, pretty well, gone insane in his attempts to artificially extend his life. Therefore, strange, warped motivations could be somewhat acceptable. But the Master, at this stage of his life (or, more appropriately, lives), is supposed to be much more calculating and interested in supremacy rather than just "making bad things happen". Yet, suddenly, for no real reason that seems to benefit him directly, he wants to release the former masters of Earth and bring down humanity. Just doesn't seem to make sense in my view of the character's progression. If, perhaps, Hulke had taken a moment to give the Master some sort of dialogue to explain that maybe his prison term had given him a thirst for revenge on Earth or something similar to that - I might have accepted it. But we get none of that. So, instead, we're just supposed to accept the stereotypical "the Master is up to something really bad" formulae and not question things too hard. Again, very typical of this era. 

Now, I'll slow down a bit on my criticism and try to formulate some good points about this tale. 

The story is off to a very promising start. Hulke - as well as the performances of Delgado and Pertwee - all do a great job of deepening the relationship between Master and Doctor. I really liked how this played out. Except that, as I pointed out earlier, all this deliberate attempt to display the isolation the Master is facing causes the story's geography to fall apart later! 

Sadly, as I try to get through several other good points of this story - they oftentimes have a "shadow of flaw" following them too. Another great example of this would be the swordfight between the Master and the Doctor. Easily one of the best swordfights in the show's history. I get a real impression here that both Delgado and Pertwee have a considerable background in swordfighting (which most of classically-trained actors of the time would) and they really perform the duel masterfully. But, once more, if we look past the window-dressing plot element, we see a fundamental flaw. Who, in God's name, arranges several sets of sharpened swords directly outside the cell of a prisoner in a maximum security prison?! Once again, something that is set up for the execution of formulae rather than genuine plot. 

The same can also be said of one of the other famous traits of this story. That of the huge cast that it had. It was neat to see so many characters in one story but it does almost seem like, rather than develop storyline properly, the author chose to just keep introducing as many new characters as he could in hopes that getting to know them would keep us distracted from the underlying flaws of the plot. 

Okay, okay, I'll look for some genuine strengths to this story! I certainly like that we got a Pertwee story taking place during his exile where UNIT wasn't actually used to fight the menace. Yes, there was still millitairy involvement but it was nice to see that other factions of the millitairy exist in the Whoniverse besides UNIT. And how the Doctor must deal with things differently because he doesn't have the familiarity with this millitairy organisation that he does with the Brig and the boys. A neat direction to take the story in.

I also liked the concept of the Sea Devils and the way they return us to the idea Hulke first explored so beautifully in "The Silurians" of how we would all react if we suddenly realised we might have to share our planet with someone else as sentient as us. I even think he made a good choice by not getting too much into this idea again (since it had been explored quite adequately in Silurians) and focussing more on action and battle rather than debate and pontification. It sort of even gives us the sense that the Sea Devils are more of a war-like or even subservient culture and that the Silurians are the real leaders. Something we see fleshed out many years later when both species return in "Warriors of the Deep". 

I also think this is a spectacularly well-directed story, in many ways. It has some excellent battle sequences that exceeded the limitations of low-budget 70s T.V. (yes, I remember noting earlier how "cheap" the story looks in places - but now I'm trying to get validly contextual in my analysis rather than contradicting myself!). I'm even willing to admit that a couple of those action shots look pretty gosh-darned good by even modern-day standards. As well, there are some really memorable shots, in general, that I thought were highly effective. The creepy close-up of the bureaucrat's mouth as he explains that "war is hell -what's for breakfast?" being one of the best examples. 

Even the music, believe it or not, didn't annoy me much. The show was trying a different approach with the incidental music and - although it was wildly intrusive in most places - it was neat to, at least, see them try something new and different. How's that for a massively differing opinion from general fandom?! 

But then, I rather get the impression that this review, in general, is differing from the opinion of general fandomn! Sorry, worshippers of the holy Petwee, but I really don't think there's much here. Again, not completely awful - but not the "shining piece of glory" most of you claim it to be. This is made even more glaringly obvious by the fact that someone as magnificent as Malcolm Hulke should not have cranked out such a flimsy, formulae-driven piece. I almost have to wonder if some radical changes occurred after Hulke passed it on to the production team. The whole story seems to be a watered-down version of his story-telling skills with various "chills, spills and action" elements turned up intentionally. 

"Below-par" Who, in my opinion. But I get the impression I'm pretty alone in it!

The Green Death' is a genuine Doctor Who classic. Aliens tend to invade Earth far too often to be believed in the Doctor Who universe (why would so many different races want to invade our one little planet?), but 'The Green Death' thankfully avoids this cliche by telling the story of the fairly mundane and earthbound problem of pollution, and then makes it interesting by adding the Doctor Who staple ingredient of monsters in the form of the giant maggots. The anti-capitalist sermonizing is heavy-handed, but the story manages to transcend that and remain a solid and entertaining chapter in the Doctor's adventures. 

The plot is sound, though I'm not sure we ever learn exactly who built BOSS (he does mention his creators without going into much detail). Global Chemicals, a presumably multinational corporation headquartered in Wales, has developed a new process for producing greater quantities of gasoline from crude oil. While more efficient, this process also creates a dangerous by-product in the form of a toxic green sludge which can't be broken down or destroyed, so it must be stored. Global's solution is to pump the sludge down into a recently disused coal mine, where it will supposedly remain buried. Out of sight, out of mind. It's never that simple of course, and in true Doctor Who fashion, there are monstrous results. The sludge mutates maggots, causing them to grow to giant proportions and evidently grow fangs and learn to jump. The sludge also begins to kill people on contact, hence the "green death™ of the title. All of this happens before the story proper begins, and then UNIT is drawn into events, initially to provide security for Global Chemicals but also to investigate the death of the miner. The bulk of the televised story is spent exploring the mystery of the mines, and then spent trying to deal with the threat from the maggots, and deal with Global Chemicals and BOSS. The story works well over six episodes, revealing first one layer of the mystery and then another. We get plenty of good material and character moments for the Doctor, the Brigadier, Benton and Yates. The trip to Metebelis 3 that has been attempted all season is finally taken by the Doctor, with both useful and funny results. Oh, and Jo Grant falls in love in a remarkably short amount of time and leaves to get married at the end of the story. 

I often discuss the characters first when I'm reviewing, but in this case I'd like to address the philosophy behind the tale, since unlike most other Doctor Who stories, here the moral not only takes center stage, but is the reason behind the story's creation. Like most sane people in the world I'm certainly pro-environment, but I get very tired of corporation-bashers who insist that large, international corporate entities do nothing but pollute the planet, use up resources and trample the little guy. It's a blatant and lazy stereotype, and we are presented with just such an unbalanced picture in this story. The approach taken is a cowardly one though, since real issues are ducked by presenting us an evil polluting corporation run not by humans, but by a megalomaniac computer, the BOSS. The only employees we see are a few upper echelon executives and about a dozen security guards, and sooner or later they all come under the mental subjugation of BOSS, leaving little room to cast the moral blame for Global Chemical's pollution at their feet. The good ones like Elgin and Fell are eventually brainwashed when they rebel against profit at all costs, and Stevens, who is the main antagonist for UNIT and the chief legman for BOSS, even he repents when his mind is cleared by the Doctor. The story seems to indict the corporate system and the capitalism that drives it as irredeemable, and sends the message that even good people like Elgin can't help but be destroyed by it. Which is of course, utter nonsense. 

One of the problems with that point of view is its one-sidedness. It's not universally true by any stretch of the imagination. Now I had initially hoped that having both moral and immoral executives in Global Chemicals was an attempt at balance, but it doesn't seem to be. We are presented with another myth: the 'back to nature = golden age' myth, embodied by our unbelievably well-educated and Nobel prize winning hippies at the Wholeweal community. The contrast between the well-groomed, well-spoken, affluent corporate executives who are nonetheless either immoral or caught up in the immoral system, and the educated but happy dropouts working for the betterment of mankind couldn't be more pronounced. It's also far removed from reality since the hippy movement was generally selfish, and based on abandoning society rather than bettering it. The reason I say that this group of hippies destroys any attempt at balance is that while there are moral and immoral characters at Global, there are no correspondingly equal immoral Wholewealers. They're all idealistic and on the right track. While lovely characters, they're just too good to be true. 

So we have evil corporation vs. good societal dropouts. This is the story setup, and it comes from a philosophical point of view I profoundly disagree with, and yet I've given the story high praise at the beginning of this review. I've gone so far as to call it a classic, and I hold to that. Despite the philosophy behind much of the story, the idea that we must take care of our environment is as true today as it was in 1973. That alone isn't enough to elevate The Green Death to the status of a classic, but add to that the fact that the story itself is solid, with plenty of scope for all the regulars, and a good amount of drama, and that goes a long way to making this story stand out from many of its peers. The plot is multi-layered. It sets up the mystery of what killed the miner, then solves that by showing us the pollutants in the mine and the maggots, which raises the question of where those came from. That question is answered, but then we are left with the question of who it is that has been talking to Stevens and compelling him to 'process' people. That question is then answered, and still we are left with the mystery of just what the computer plans and how it can be stopped. Add to that the subplot about Jo growing up and striking out on her own, and how the Doctor reacts to her imminent departure, and you have a story full of progression, questions, and twists, with some excellent character drama that fits well into the Doctor Who format. The Green Death is well-written and structured, and for that the author and production team deserve credit. 

The story makes good use of all the characters, with the UNIT regulars all receiving good roles. The Brigadier is the most prominent, and he gets the usual mixed characterization that you find at this point in the series. He's straightforward and sceptical when dealing with Stevens, yet seemingly unable to start his investigation of the mine without the Doctor. It may well be that experience has taught him that he won't find the answers on his own, but the Brigadier of 'The Invasion' and 'Spearhead from Space' is proactive, and very much his own man. The way he often dithers while waiting on the Doctor weakens his character considerably. Still, in this story Lethbridge-Stewart stands up to Stevens and a cabinet minister with dignity and diplomacy, and takes his dressing-down from the Prime Minister without looking like an idiot. He also benefits from a chance to let his hair down so to speak and get out of uniform for much of the story. The dinner at Wholeweal where he's enjoying his meal and cigar and laughing at the dinner table is a great character moment to be sure. We rarely get to see the Brigadier off-duty and enjoying himself, but it's nice to see a different side to him. And despite being duty-bound to obey orders, he inserts Mike Yates into Global Chemicals for a little corporate espionage, which is an eminently sensible action to take. This is a reasonably good story for the Brigadier. The Time Monster and The Three Doctors are perhaps his low points, and here he's on his way back up towards respectability. 

Benton doesn't play much of a role in events, but he's his usual affable self here. From his always-polite approach to Jo, to his good humor while flinging fungus to the maggots, to his rather brave leap over the maggots to rescue Cliff and Jo, he's always likeable. Captain Yates gets to remind us of UNITs occasional use of undercover surveillance by infiltrating Global Chemicals as an ersatz member of the ministry. He's very animated and cheerful here, and shows himself to be fairly capable as well. He gathers enough information to direct the Doctor to the executive elevator, and has enough courage to go back into Global for more information even when his cover is blown. 

This is of course Jo Grant's final story, and her departure is handled well in the sense that it doesn't come from nowhere during the last five minutes of the final episode. If you look back over Katy Manning's three years on the show, her character certainly grew and changed over time to be far more capable, so Jo's desire to strike out on her own is believable and well-handled. What isn't as believable is the rapid attachment to and engagement to Cliff Jones. This story can hardly take more than a few days, and yet the two of them decide to get married in such a short time? I suppose it can happen, but still... probably got divorced about that fast too. Time issues aside, her pulling away from the Doctor is well handled by both Manning and Jon Pertwee, who put in great performances in all respects. 

The Doctor is at his best here, and Pertwee seems to me to be at his most enthusiastic. He is so full of energy and life in this story, and is very enjoyable to watch. Whether gleefully organizing the diversion protest march while he breaks onto the grounds of Global Chemicals, to angrily demanding that the sealing of the mine be stopped, to his shocked _expression as he realizes that he's walked in on Cliff and Jo's romantic encounter, Pertwee gets to show a wide range of acting skills here. Of particular note is his jovial and exuberant banter with BOSS and Stevens when the useless attempt is made to brainwash him. He claims to be having a 'whale of a time' and Pertwee's acting conveys that well. His turn as both the milkman and the cleaning lady are fun as well. On the whole, this is one of his better performances. 

As an aside, I note there are complaints about the depiction of the Welsh in this story. As an American, I don't really know a lot about the apparent stereotypes that are being portrayed, so I can't really address those. Perhaps the Welsh get similar treatment to Southerners in American entertainment, who are often portrayed in popular entertainment as simpletons with exaggerated accents. In any case, from my point of view the Welsh characters in this story seem to be solid, admirable people for the short time we get to see them. The miners all seem down to earth and concerned about their fellows, and none strike me as particularly exaggerated. From my point of view, the milkman is the only one who stands out from his fellows with his accent and speech patterns. 

Special effects are pretty poor in some spots, but reasonably good everywhere else. It's hard to find fault with most Doctor Who, a low-budget show that did so well with what they had. Generally a solid effort all around, even if the CSO isn't always successful. 

A note about the DVD: as always, the picture and sound are much improved over my old VHS copy. The commentary that I've listened to so far with Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks and Katy Manning is fun and lively. Mr. Letts is surely one of the most pleasant people who ever worked on the show, and Katy Manning is quite bubbly. It's a pity Jon Pertwee isn't still with us to participate (you know he would have). The extras are interesting, particularly the special effects feature. However, the standout extra has to be the 'Global Conspiracy' feature, with a hilarious 'documentary' about the effect of the Global Chemicals debacle on the town. It's funny and it's also a far more creative way to reassemble some of the cast members than an interview would have been. 

To sum everything up: good solid story and plot, good character moments all around for the regular cast, but with a half-baked philosophy behind it. Not flawless, but yes, a classic Doctor Who adventure that has a little of everything. Well worth watching.

‘Inferno’ is considered one of the more memorable Jon Pertwee stories, in large part for its notable parallel-world gimmick. And yes, it is just a gimmick – the plot device is effective in its shock value, no doubt (yanking the rug out from us three episodes in!), but for all the story’s serious tone, it mainly just gives the UNIT regulars an opportunity to dress up and play the baddies for once. The ‘sideways slide’ actually has very little to do with the episode’s true plot – really, the sudden power cut to the TARDIS console could have been caused by anything, and happened in any story. And not only is the ‘slide’ a gimmick, it’s a red herring as well! It doesn’t explain what the green glop is, or how it turns people into Primords; all it does is show the Doctor what will happen if he doesn’t stop the Inferno drilling, which he was already trying to do anyway. (Ultimately, what’s causing the phenomenon is never really explained, and once the project is finally halted, the Doctor seems to lose whatever interest he might have had in the mystery.)

That said, ‘Inferno’ is still quite watchable, making up for what it lacks in brains with a serious and scary style, and an unusual realism. Like many Pertwee-era stories, this one is long, and yet for the most part it doesn’t feel it. The most notable and successful of the story’s elements has nothing to do with parallel universes – it’s the sound of the Inferno drill itself. Doctor Who is famous for over-extending itself – throughout its history, it’s tried to actually show us things like spacecrafts landing and giant monsters attacking, despite having just a tenth of the budget necessary to pull the effects off well (if that). And who am I kidding, this is certainly part of classic Who’s charm and evergreen appeal. Yet, it is extremely interesting to see the production team exercising the rare piece of aesthetic sleight of hand. And how well it works! The drill’s incessant, god-awful grinding, with the characters having to raise their voices to be heard above it, does more to convince us that there’s a giant machine just off-screen than any tightly shot model ever could. Sure, we don’t get to see the drill – we really don’t need to.

The Primord plotline is played very straight, and the fact that most of the characters are unaware of the mutations until late in the story adds an element of danger and menace. The episode’s horror elements, while subtle, are still quite effective. The Dog-faced Boy costumes are ultimately rather silly-looking, but in the early episodes the Primords (influenced possibly by Night of the Living Dead, but actually looking forward to later vicious-zombie movies) are quite scary and believable, especially given that the world in which they are an aberration feels so real to begin with. And personally, I find something quite sickening about how the mutating humans uncontrollably rub the green slime onto their faces – Olaf Pooley really seems to be relishing his ‘serving,’ and the effect is practically obscene. (Stahlman is a marvelous villain – in a series legendary for bad guys who want to take over the universe, this kind of petty monomaniac is refreshing and totally believable. He doesn’t have delusions of grandeur, exactly – he’s just the boss from hell.)

As for the parallel-continuum aspect, it’s of course fun in its way. Caroline John probably comes off the best – there’s something recognizably Liz Shaw-like inside her, but for the most part she’s frighteningly hard and steely. Nicholas Courtney has perhaps too much fun as the Brigade Leader – there’s a semi-foreign accent that comes and goes, and the shouting and crying are not much more than ordinary Who ham. But there are things to like about his performance as well – he and John play off each other beautifully in the interrogation sequence (“Name?”), and his posture as the Brigade Leader shows that it wasn’t just in the eighties that this actor started to pack on the pounds. (In other words, it reveals how much of Courtney’s trim bearing as the Brigadier is actually physical acting.)

As for the Doctor himself, Pertwee is like-ably crabby throughout; his up-yours responses to Stahlman’s pig-headedness are particularly well played. I’d forgotten just how serious the Third Doctor is – and, for as much as I do enjoy the ‘cosmic wisecracker’ approach taken by Tom Baker and some of the other actors, it’s nice to see a Doctor who can tell the Brigadier that he was at Krakatoa in 1883, and not play it for laughs. It’s kind of a spooky moment when Pertwee says he was there; we believe him, and for a moment we see the Doctor as others must see him – as a figure of bizarre mystery, full of tales which fly in the face of common sense, and yet which have the air of truth nonetheless.

All told, an entertaining story, well worth watching.

People seem to want to like ‘The Claws of Axos,’ and others have shown that there are things *to* like about it. The organic, parasitic spaceship with its satellite ‘crew’ is a good idea, one that I would say is better realized here than in ‘Terror of the Zygons.’ The exchange in which the Axon ‘leader’ hesitates on the word ‘ship’ is particularly nice in communicating the idea that these are not typical sci-fi aliens (i.e., humans with scales, extra eyes, etc.). The Axons look good in all their incarnations, and the way in which they transform is horrifying and quite wonderful.

But ultimately the story remains a minor one at best, and even considered as such, is less than the sum of its good parts. For starters, the plot is needlessly complicated – this is one of those stories that seems straightforward enough, but if you stop for a moment and think, you’ll realize you have no real idea what’s going on. As is the case with many of the Pertwee stories, there really is no need for the Master to be in it at all; the character is included for one reason only - to give the Doctor access to a working TARDIS, so he can create the time loop at the end. And, speaking of which, Axos’s desire to achieve time travel is itself another pure contrivance, designed simply to allow the Doctor to use a TARDIS as a silver bullet to eliminate them. Why else have them try to do anything more than suck the earth dry? (Isn’t that frightening enough?) I suppose Baker/Martin and the production team wanted to come up something a little different than a typical ‘blow everything up’ Who finale, but it all seems a bit awkwardly assembled to me.

And there are blatant stupidities besides. Not only does showing the Axon monsters in the prologue spoil the suspense, it also has the unfortunate side effect of making the Doctor look stupid, since he tells Chinn not to assume that Axos is hostile after we already know that it *is*. And while the Doctor or Jo might be curious (and reckless) enough to climb inside the Axos pod at the first opportunity, I find it hard to believe that such a huge party, including the head of UNIT, important Ministry of Defense officials, and Nuton Power Complex administrators, would just traipse blindly into this completely unknown alien organism. 

As for the actors, Peter Bathurst throws himself into the part of Chinn, but the character is still pretty tedious – such a broadly drawn caricature of an old-fashioned ‘England for the English’ conservative that even lefties will find it hard to enjoy. (Although Chinn should quickly be pointed out to critics of the new series who claim that liberal sympathies first came to Doctor Who with Russell T. Davies.) The other actors are better – in particular, it might have been nice to see Filer reappear in some other UNIT stories – but they sort of disappear in the messiness

Let’s see, what have I forgotten? Well, there’s Pigbin Josh, of course – alas, poor Pigbin! There’s not really much to say about him; the very *idea* of him is in poor taste, needless to say. But I have to admit, I crack up every time his ‘rustic’ musical theme plays, and his death is so unnecessary that . . . well, you just can’t help feeling sorry for the cracked old stereotype, can you?