These ape primitives will die as they have lived. In a sea of their own blood.

When I first saw Warriors of the Deep, the fickle finger of fate meant I had seen all the fifth Doctor stories previous and seen Doctor Who and the Silurians. I watched it and, I admit, I cringed. No, not the Myrka - Solow! She's far more embarrassing, looking stupid, talking stupid, acting stupid. I thought when I saw her in The Time Monster, she was trying to do an Atlantean accent. Here she talks like she's got a broken jaw and is hardly wearing something that could distract from her complete lack of talent like she was armed with in her first adventure. I found her attempt to attack the Myrka shockingly believable. Embarrassing, but, yeah, Solow seems stupid enough to try picking a fist-fight with a sea dragon.Warriors is not a bad story. If this was an audio story (bar the Silurian's voices which I concede are crap), it would be highly regarded, so the plot at least is sound and that's always half the battle. The ideas in this story are very impressive. This is a future where the world could end in nuclear war, but there's no hope that an attack could be a mistake. If Sea Base 4 fires its missiles, it isn't because Karina knocked over her coffee and the whole thing's a dreadful mistake. It need a human being plugged into the computer and the Commander's permission before they can even aim their weaponry, so there's no risk of accidents. Yet, at the same time the whole crew are under the thumb of their computer who is so obtuse no one can tell until the last minute whether this is just a drill or the real thing.

The Doctor says that nothing has changed since 1984, and it's hard to disagree. In fact, it's as relevant today as it was, with security and fear of terrorism at its height and the paranoia that it won't be some hairy monster that wants to kill you as an infidel, but rather the friend you've known your whole life. Its exemplified in the scene where Maddox is ordered to strangle Karina to death, Karina who is the closest thing he's got to a girlfriend and the only person who genuinely cares for him as anything other than a glorified modem. It's a scene far more unsettling than any number of monsters firing machine guns at you, especially as you know Maddox doesn't want to do this and has no control over himself.

Of course, he does this because he's being controlled by enemy agents Neilson and Solow who are working for 'the other power bloc' and are not particularly sympathetic. Solow whines in a monotone that she's a doctor and not that good at murder, and Neilson tells her to shut up (not enough, say I), and after that they're evil villains smiling as they betray their colleagues and murder in cold blood. It would easy to say this power bloc is represented as a bunch of camp psychopaths, but the staff of Sea Base 4 aren't shown in a particularly better light. Bulic is a thug, Preston an uptight bitch and Vorshak not much better. He has no people skills, believing that telling a nervous, twitchy intruder will cooperate if told he will be treated 'with honor'. He ignores the Doctor's advice, continually threatens him with death, and is generally unpleasant. His stiff lines like 'You'll get no help from me, Silurian' come across less as bad acting, and more as good acting. Vorshak is trying to sound tough and failing completely. For all his talk of honor, he runs a base that could wipe out a million civilian population centres, plans to execute unarmed prisoners, and is happy to have people have their minds probed. When Solow tells him that Maddox needs 'rebooting' for humanitarian reasons, it's clearly meant to stir emotion in Vorshak. It fails. He shows no concern for Maddox before, during or after as anything other than a firing key.

This fits with comparing and contrasting Vorshak with Icthar, who is similarly planning to trigger mass bloodshed without a care, isn't interested in the welfare of his 'men' and is a boring conversationalist to boot. Although the Silurians and humans aren't characterized very well, they are shown to be mirror opposites to each other, and it all aides the Doctor's position, caught between two races who both think they were here first and are spoiling for a fight. The humans attack the Silurians without cause, but the Silurians keep attacking the humans knowing the 'ape primitives' can't possibly fight them. Vorshak is prepared to die to stop the missiles firing, and Icthar is prepared to die to fire them. As Turlough points out, just because the Silurians as a species are good, it doesn't change the fact the ones on Sea Base 4 are ruthless genocidal maniacs. But so are Preston and Bulic, and you can't tar humanity for their individual prejudice.Earthshock aside, the fifth Doctor's era is a quiet, calm string of adventures when more often than not it's the bad guys who die, if indeed anyone. But this story dumps the Doctor back in the Earthshock world, where monsters kill all humans, humans kill humans, and no one will listen to the weirdo in the police box. The death and destruction around the Cybermen is no longer a one-off any more. Warriors might as well have begun with the TARDIS fallen through a CVE as it lands in a season of bleak stories where good people die and the righteous don't necessarily triumph. It's like the final season of Tom Baker's Doctor, with the Time Lord finding himself in adventures better suited to his sucessor.

But while the fourth Doctor got depressed and broody, the fifth Doctor tries to swim before he sinks. Warriors of the Deep shows him at his most anarchic, aggressive and desperate so far. He sets the base's nuclear reactor to critical - just as a distraction to stop some guards. The Doctor wields guns, wrestles with guards and sets up laser canons in this story, as if the sharp edges of the fifth Doctor are being brought to the surface in this proper base under siege story. But there is also the Doctor's belief that he can sort this out without violence, that if the humans surrender bloodshed can be avoided. He's right, and it's proved when the Sea Devils do not kill Turlough and Bulic when they drop their guns (Icthar insists that as long as the humans insist on fighting, the Sea Devils will fight back - and win). Anyone complaining that the presence of hexachromite makes the plot obvious misses the point. Its so obvious it's almost a sick joke, with the Doctor being told right away he has the means to wipe out his enemies in one go. The Doctor tries to find another way, not using the gas until the last moments of the episode and even then tries to dilute it so as not to kill the invaders. The reason all the Silurians and Sea Devils die is not down to the Doctor, but because Bulic adds another entire canister to the air supply. Like in The Silurians, it's not the Doctor's methods that fail, but his faith in supporting characters. And when his good intentions have come to naught, when he has failed for a third time to make peace and this time not even saved humanity, something cracks in the Doctor, a development that I'll keep an eye on.

Tegan and Turlough are also given a good slice of the action. Tegan is curious about her future, willing to dive into the reactor tanks without a second thought, and open-minded enough to not object to saving the lives of Silurians - when the Doctor growls he's not sure why he likes humanity, it's not hard to see that Tegan (and others like her) is the answer. She cares for the Doctor, but still stays true to her character, rubbishing the Time Lord's plans and Turlough's cowardice, not to mention the priceless moment when she easily opens the door her companions have been struggling to budge for most of a scene.

Turlough also decides to knuckle down and become a companion rather than a passenger for Warriors. The Doctor openly wonders if Turlough is up to it, and the story nicely shows Turlough trying to prove it. While his instant dismissal of the Doctor being dead seems a bit rash, we see him willingly let the guards capture him in order to give Tegan a chance to escape. It's quite clear that Turlough believes the Doctor is dead, and is not happy about it. He doesn't try to sweet-talk Vorshak and the others, but is furious with them for killing his friend and seems on the point of exploding when the commander dryly speculates "the boy seems to be right". Turlough is even willing to pick up a gun, run through a base of hostiles and threaten Neilson with death in order to give Tegan and the Doctor a chance of survival. But his resolve isn't perfect, and we see when he is locked up and given a chance to think, his first thought is to head for the TARDIS and abandon the others. Ultimately, Preston shames him into going back for them, but the fact she succeeds shows that Turlough isn't beyond redemption. He can be very brave, but only if he convinces himself that he has a chance of surviving and success, and his argument that futility and nobility often get mixed up is true. Vorshak believes doing things for honor, Turlough does them because they are the right thing to do.

But all this is looking beneath the surface, something that the harsh lights and green monsters have put off other reviewers.

The easiest way to enjoy Warriors of the Deep is to look at it not as a show crippled by bad design and acting, but a perfect documentary of the plot. It's very funny that way. For example, all the humans are wearing ludicrous amounts of eye shadow and have a large V sewn onto the backs of their uniforms. Now, that's easily explained. When the Doctor says 'nothing has changed' since Tegan's time, he includes the fashion; and I find it very easy to believe that Vorshak had his initial sewn into the uniforms so that everyone on the base knows the name of the commander. Yes, it is true that the story would be more tense and gripping if the lights were turned down but be serious. This is a military base! It was built and designed for people to live and work in at the bottom of the inky depths! The architect was not going 'I know, if I leave a few light bulbs out, it'll get all gloomy and creepy if some ancient reptiles attack!' was he? And considering how gloomy the corridors are, or the how dark the control room gets during missile runs, I think the story's dark and shadowy enough.

I am of the personal belief that seeing monsters during daylight or in brightly lit room is a great move - OK, it might flag up how crap the outfits are, but on a level it makes them more frightening: these things don't just hide in the dark or only come out at night. Hiding in the light won't stop them following you and killing you. Yes, I know this doesn't excuse the Myrka, but look at it this way - yes, the Myrka looks pathetic and ridiculous. So does the duck-billed platypus, but that has a fatal sting and could kill you. The Myrka is lethal and, worse than that, looks stupid. Being killed by a Dalek or a Cybermen is bad, but being killed by the Myrka is truly horrific - imagine having 'killed by scaly pantomime horse' on your tombstone. No wonder the Silurians use them as weapons, the enemies would run a bloody mile. And on paper, it looks good with its long seaweed beard and clear Sea Devil descent. Isn't it brilliant when it comes across Solow and is totally baffled by her? Surely you can sympathize with it as it confusedly mirrors her kung-fu hand gestures as if trying to understand her? Or how it desperately repeats them as the Doctor fries its brain?

But the Myrka has nothing on the Sea Devils. In the original story, these orange (or are they green?) turtle heads in their string vests looked cool, cute and dangerous as they stormed through prisons and blew up life boats and peered into diving bells... Here, they... they... They're not as good. With those silly inflatable shoulder pads and mini-satellite dish guns, there's a definite failure of style there. But the story gives us more than enough clues to explain the Sea Devils' behavior. When Scibus explains that the Sea Devils never revived on schedule but effectively overslept, you have to wonder what this gang of turtles found so interesting as not to leave the bunker. And we see a shot of the window, beyond which is green smoke.

Did Sauvix and his Sea Devils spend the last sixty five million years sharing bongs and giggling? Watch the story and judge for yourself. The Sea Devil's expressions are frozen somewhere between "I'm shober, honest," and "Whooooooaaaaaa!" As Sauvix boasts that his warriors were revived and ready for battle, we see them barely able to stumble in a straight line. One of the Devils spends the entire attack on the Sea Base staring at the ceiling and aiming his gun at it, as if following a very interesting fly. Two more bump into each other in part four, and few can keep their heads from rolling around the place. And none of them can shoot straight! It takes five attempts before they kill the blinded Neilson who is standing right in front of them! Sauvix's wonderfully drunken "Bring forth... ... ...er, the cutting device!" is almost as brilliant as when he stares intently at the scroll Icthar tells him 'study well'.

As a fighting force, their behavior is criminally pathetic. But if we assume the Sea Devils are all incredibly stoned and trying not giggle, their actions make perfect sense.

And this leads me to Scibus, undeniable the most effective and amusing comic relief character in Doctor Who. Forget Mickey, Duggan or that philosophical bloke from Dragonfire, Scibus deserves his own spin-off TV show for the side-splitting antics he has here. I laughed myself hoarse watching this Silurian's antics, which recalled more of Dougal McGuire in Father Ted than a Silurian officer.

Every second line of Icthar seems to be "Excellent, Scibus", which is said sarcastically, patiently, depressed and bored depending on what Scibus does - for example peering into one of those recycled Cybermen guns despite its Tarpok that's supposed to be using them.

When Icthar asks if the Sea Devil chamber is warm enough for the Silurians to enter, Scibus stares blankly at Icthar for a full three seconds, looks at the door, then back at Icthar and says in a very uncertain voice "... No?"

When Icthar tells Scibus to revive the Sea Devils, Scibus turns back to the door control then presses it, then hastily punches the other controls, clearly thinking "Oh, god it's got to be one of these buttons..."

When Icthar introduces Scibus and Tarpok as his "companions" to Sauvix, Scibus gives a little girly wave to Sauvix, the shameless flirt.

Scibus and Tarpok spend half of episode three looking like Aldo and Royce in Warrior's Gate, carrying a picnic hamper. By the end of the episode, they have mislaid in and appear to be looking for it when Sauvix bumps into them and Icthar hastily asks how the battle's going.

Scibus starts to press controls on the control panel in the last episode with a childish glee, followed by the agonizing wait as he adjusts the position of the Manipulator again and again, as if trying to get the feng shei just right.

His death scene has him make a strange gurgling noise. Which Icthar ignores. So Scibus makes it louder. Before sliding off his stool and hitting the floor. And gurgling again.

Warriors of the Deep ends up something of a rarity in Doctor Who - two completely different stories with the same plot, actors and special effects. If you watch the story, you are rewarded with one of the grimmest, coldest moral dilemma bloodbaths Doctor Who can offer. If you watch the production, you are rewarded with an Earth Reptile version of Dude, Where's My Car.

Utterly entertaining.

The earth is hungry. It waits to eat.

The end of the planet Earth is something that Doctor Who has found itself irresistibly drawn to. In the original outline for the series, the first time we realized this police box was a time machine was when the scanner showed Earth exploding and 'Doctor Who' concluded they had traveled into the future to see this. In the revived series, RTD based a whole story around that in The End of the World. The Ark also showed what humanity was up to during this apocalypse, and both Inferno and Pyramids of Mars upped the stakes by showing the destruction of Earth happening all too soon.

There's something odd about stories set in a universe we're our home planet is no more. Maybe it's just because I live here, but I do get lonely when I experience The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Babylon 5, Blake's 7: The Logic of Empire, Titan AE or just hear that line from The Ark where a character is coldly reminded that "the Earth itself no longer exists". To know my world isn't in the sky... It's not a pleasant thought and I believe it's the reason why all fans, to an extent, were uncomfortable with the idea of Gallifrey being destroyed. Not necessarily for the planet or its inhabitants, but because the Doctor had to feel that feeling from now on. And who'd wish that on anyone?

But Frontios goes further.

All these 'end of the planet Earth' stories contradict themselves to a lesser or greater extent, but they are universally positive. The world doesn't end in Inferno or Pyramids of Mars. Humanity and Monoids get a happy ending in The Ark and the Earth is put out of its misery by an evolved humanity in The End of the World. It is put down to a rite of passage, of accepting one's end, of new hope.

Not in Frontios.

I might complain that it contradicts a good 80% of televised and untelevised Doctor Who, but it's the point. The future we see on Frontios is bleak. Humanity has not touched every star, mingled with alien races, set up an empire that will last a thousand years. Humanity is alone, the other planets are devoid of life, and Earth's civilization is described by the Time Lords as "a group of refugees".

Depressing, isn't it? Grim, bleak, doom-laden... and utterly believable.

Come on, admit it, you've looked up at the night sky and occasionally wondered if there wasn't life out there and the Earth is all there is. Frontios dares to set a story in that thought, and its braver than I am. There are not even any Earth colonies to send help, or outposts in other galaxies. The settlement on Frontios is all there is.

And its dying.

This background is what gives Frontios an edge. I could easily complain the first scene where Bragen and Range do nothing but spout exposition at each other in angry voices, or that Norna has a well-tended mullet and uses the word "chicken" as an insult when she presumably has never seen one in her life before, but it doesn't matter. Maybe those Blake's 7 helmets the orderlies wear are cursed, because they make the bleakest setting and plot I can think of in Doctor Who.

There is a problem in that the bleakness just gets a little too big - the problems are painted on too large a canvas to be comfortable. The colony ship crashes, killing most of the crew before an outbreak of plague slaughters the rest. Yet, the survivors are numerous enough to survive thirty years of asteroid storms as well as being picked off by Tractators, retrogrades and court martials. Heck, the timescale is a bit large for me. The bombardment has been going on, non-stop for thirty... years... Now, if it was three years I'd think 'what a long time'. But thirty! Plus, Frontios is said to have no wood or plant life, which makes you wonder how the humans have been cultivating food or how they could survive on Frontios even without a bunch of angry wood lice snatching their corpses. Bragen says that oft-mentioned-rarely-seen Captain Revere held the colony together on sheer personality, and the fact all the colonists seem to actually believe they're all right as long as Plantagenet is alive supports that.

Also, I began to get really irritated at the speeches of the colonists, especially when they kept saying "the people of Frontios". Now, to be honest, I think they're not the people of Frontios at all, but the immigrant of Frontios. But surely they'd say "us", wouldn't they? "Why didn't he tell the people of Frontios?" demands Norna, when "Why didn't he tell us?" would work just as well, if not better. Not to mention the abundance of descriptions of "nasty things we call Frontios".

And why is one of the main aims of this story to ditch the hatstand? What's wrong with the hatstand? It was barely noticeable, being white on white (and they bring in back in Season 24...) so why arrange it to be removed from the TARDIS? Especially when there's categorically the other one from Castrovalva to put in its place... However, it does afford some classic and memorable scenes. The Hatstand of Fatal Death, wielding by Turlough the Unhinged. A fanzine title if ever I heard one.

Onto the positive. Logopolis was about death, Castrovalva about rebirth, and Frontios is about horror. Pure and simple. Any story that has people being sucked into the ground when they're dead or ill would horrify me, but when painted against the terribly bleak view above, it reaches another level. For example, moments after Tegan realizes that Frontios has a shoot-to-kill policy and she cries "Every death increases the risk of extinction!", one of the patients drops dead. Range's little speech about corpses vanishing from graves, people disappearing and sighting of someone being sucked face-first into the ground... Are you creeped out, yet? I'm creeped out. I literally shuddered when I saw a photo of the sides of the excavating machine, and you see that while the wasted body of Revere drives it, there are four more dead bodies involved. I'm thankful that the gore in the novelization was left out. The Gravis is hideous enough without having a floating severed head doing his talking for him, and grabbing people with severed arms. Brrrrr...

And if that wasn't worse, the TARDIS crew aren't left untouched by Frontios, either. I once realized that the reason the Doctor's so damn calm when he's arrested or sentenced with death is that all he needs to do is nip back to the TARDIS and he's safe; no one can catch him. I realized that while waiting outside the principal's office of my school, deep in trouble, and by god was I envious. I could have used an escape clause like that. And that's the point of the first episode. The Doctor saunters in, acts like he owns the place, confident he can escape when necessary. But in this story, he can't.

I defy anyone, absolutely anyone to believe that the TARDIS was destroyed at that early cliffhanger. Definitely, the Doctor's 'oh dear, still, never mind' attitude suggests he knows that the ship isn't destroyed, just inaccessible - you could almost think his story about the destroyed time machine is simply dupe some hidden enemy into thinking that he does believe his ship is gone, until he starts doing the complete opposite in the final half of the story. To be honest, it's very lacklustre. When the Doctor coldly tells Tegan to 'forget the TARDIS', it's just as a reminder to viewers that police box isn't there this week, it's not the anguish that accompanies the Doctor in The Shadows of Avalon when arguably exactly the same thing happens to the Time Lord's blue box.

The regulars are very well characterized. From Tegan and Turlough's visible discomfort at the hyper Doctor in their first scene, to their final fond farewells to Frontios, the characters are just that - characters. They behave and react realistically and believably. Tegan wants to see what happens to her people, Turlough has a slight flirt with Norna and the Doctor is still capable of flicking two fingers to the Time Lords when someone's dying at his feet. In fact, I think the whole 'mustn't interfere' stuff was added to link up with The Five Doctors rather than to define the Doctor, who continues his little evolution as a more pro-active, less polite person. The bits where the Doctor plays a dangerous game of bluff with the Gravis return the manipulative Doctor of the Black Guardian trilogy, as he puts Tegan's survival over her opinion of him - look at the hurt on her face when he sneers at her for being a broken android. And who can't help but love a scene where the Doctor challenges his captor to let him help them or just shoot him now... and gets six rifles aimed straight as his chest?

The guest cast are pretty good. For a last minute replacement, the guy playing Range is very good, able to deliver witty banter with the Doctor, calm down Plantagenet, coldly advance on Tegan with a knife and laugh down his own prosecution and still be believable. Norna is rather bland to be honest, and her hair gives her a faintly elfish look her. I preferred her as Susan Q in The Happiness Patrol, to be honest. Bragen and Plantagenet are extremely irritating, posturing buffoons that Doctor Who seems designed to make the audience hate, but it's hard not to like them when you break through. We first see Plantagenet as a scared, frightened little man prone to posturing - but he genuinely cares for his people and his father, and is willing to tackle an enemy on his own, showing no fear when sucked into a giant by giant monsters. Bragen's continual growling hides a man who has survived forty years on discipline alone, no wonder he acts like that. He is suspicious of the Doctor, but judges the Time Lord on what he sees him do - when he determines in episode three to find our hero, it isn't clear if he wants the Doctor found to save the day or simply shot dead where he stands. His death, sacrificing himself to save Turlough who he ruthlessly manipulates throughout the final too episodes, is very moving - it's human spirit like that that kept Frontios from collapsing, and its that which RTD tries to celebrate every episode. Good for him.

Now, despite all this, the end of the story leaves a lot to be desired. By me, at least and it's as though huge chunks of the plot have been removed. (Actually, being the sad fan I am, I know exactly what was removed, but it isn't relevant). This is a story that needed another episode at the very least. The first two episodes concentrate on the problems of Frontios, while the second show the monsters in the tunnels below and the balance is lost for the final episode. While it's amusing to see that one wrong word from Tegan ultimately leads to Cockerill being dubbed a cult leader, the plot doesn't really go anywhere. The sight of retrogrades beating Cockerill and leaving him for dead (as well as attacking Norna for more than her food supplies...) is as grim and nasty as the story gets, but after Cockerill gets to his feet the rets simply fall into line after one sentence from their speaking member.

Cockerill taking over the colony in an hour goes against the decay into anarchy shown elsewhere, with so much widespread looting not even Bragen is prepared to shoot to kill, knowing it won't leave anyone left alive if he does. It also means the trial of Range happens during this uprising, which feels a bit stupid to me. I could understand the idea of Bragen holding public inquiries while the world crumbles around him, but it feels less like stubborness and more like the writer forgot their was a riot going on outside.

There's no resolution to this. Cockerill rallies his troops... and Norna tells him he's being silly, and Range sobs that 'Frontios is doomed!' and Norna says maybe it isn't... And that's it. The next time we see the colony, it's back to working order and everyone's the best of friends as ever they were.

The monsters this week are as horrible as they can be. The Tractors in general look a bit too clean and smooth, indeed if it weren't for that hideous clicking they make they'd be cute. In fact, they're only saved by the Gravis, the most vomit-inducing monster I can think of. For a start, it looks like it's been dipped in warm curry sauce instead of the Tractator's nice purple colour, and there are those bulging veins on its blank eyeballs and the slimy baleen in its mouth... Oh, it's disgusting. Utterly disgusting and its slimy, gurgling voice is even more nauseating. Who cares if it's got a nose or not, it's some hideous mutant anyway, and its big ears and fur between its carapace...

ARGHHHH! I HATE THIS THING! ARGH!

When Turlough's brain goes bye-bye and he's left a drooling wreck, you've got to wonder what could be so brain-twistingly horrible. If the Gravis was identical to the ordinary Tractators, you'd be unimpressed. Seeing the Gravis, you realize Turlough shows admirable self restraint. And the knowledge that there are Tractators everywhere, apparently, only kept docile by not having this revolting creature stirring them up into conquering the universe...

Frontios, despite its casual rejection of series continuity for the sake of atmosphere and badly-structured ending, is definitely a good story. The Tractators were apparently hoped to return, this time whipped into a frenzy by the Master instead of the Gravis, and to be honest, I would have watched it.

Actually, thinking about the Gravis, it strikes me we never actually SEE the Doctor and Tegan drop him off on Kolkokron. When Tegan complains they can't have the Gravis in the console room (why not? More interesting than a hatstand) I was expecting the Doctor to throw him at Kamelion as a roommate. Now there's a sitcom. But I wondered...

When the TARDIS split up what happened to Kamelion? Was he thrown into the underground depths of Frontios - and he'd have probably ended up in a different time zone, what with the TARDIS exploding and all. What would have happened if the Tractators found him? Would he have changed shape to assume a form pleasing to them?

Basically... I think the Gravis may really have been Kamelion all along.

After all, Kamelion doesn't really have free will. And if he can play a lute when in the form of King John, surely he can manipulate gravity in the form of a Tractator. He probably gave the rest of the Tractators that plan to mine Frontios, until one day the Doctor arrives and discovers the truth. Well, he can't let Plantagenet know that his people were nearly wiped out because of the Doctor's pet android lodger, can he? So, he locks Kamelion in his room with no supper and pretends that the Gravis 'is on Kolkokron', so as not to cause offence.

Well, that is what I think, anyway.

Avert your eyes if it offends you...

Resurrection of the Daleks has to be the most bored Doctor Who story ever.

Not that it's dull, or boring, but bored. The story seems to be looking around, desperate to find something interesting, and then dropping it, bored, before finding something new.

Look at the way it treats the Doctor. For two episodes he's stuck in a plot that has nothing to do with the rest of the story - skulking around some eerie docklands patrolled by sinister police force that he never meets. Working with the bomb disposal squad that ignore pretty much everything he says. At the half-way mark, the Doctor travels into the main plot with the Daleks... and gets locked in a room for another episode, getting his memories sucked out in a flashback sequence. When he gets out, he picks up a gun (something he was deliberately avoiding all through the first two episodes) and heads off to kill Davros. Except he doesn't. Then he goes back to the warehouse plot and releases a virus that blows up the Daleks.Resurrection of the Daleks is a story that has no interest in the Doctor, Tegan or Turlough. And considering it's Tegan's swansong, that's a bit of a shame. She gets knocked out in part two, then hides in the TARDIS for the rest of the story, leaving it and running away, and then changing her mind at the last minute. Her departure is one thing that's handled well, but it would make more sense for her to depart in the belief the Doctor's become a hardened killer than a general 'being sick of it'. Tegan seemed 'sick of it' before she joined in Logopolis and didn't want to leave in either Time-Flight or The King's Demons.

No, Resurrection isn't interested in the TARDIS crew.

Maybe it's the Daleks? Yes, the Daleks! After all, first time since 1979 we get to see the metal pepperpots from Skaro and this time no Douglas Adams "sillyness". Yes, we can forgive a story for focussing on the monsters that made the series famous.

One problem. Resurrection seems less interested in the Daleks than it does the TARDIS crew.

Now, if I was in the position for writing a story for the Daleks, I'd want to use them. Make them deadly, kill-all-biped psychopaths or very cunning, self-controlled alien death machines. Make them scary, nasty and feared by one and all.Resurrection doesn't do that, does it?

The first time we see the Daleks, they explode through a door and... get blown up. This gives them their new catchphrases. Forget "Exterminate!" or "Resistance is useless!", the Daleks spend most of the story shouting "Retreat! Withdraw!" or "My vision is impaired, I cannot see!" They aren't even able to defeat a bunch of smoking layabouts who run the space prison. They need Lytton and his men to get the job done, to defeat Styles and Mercer, to face off against Davros. The Daleks have seemingly dozens of plans working all at once and not one of them works. The Supreme Dalek spends the entire story staring at a crystal ball and complaining.

The Daleks don't seem to have any reason to be in the plot. When two of them appear and wipe out the control deck crew, it seems like a token gesture. See? Daleks are in this one! But Lytton's mercenaries do more work. The Daleks pop in for a gloat at the Doctor when they record his memory, and then run away leaving the human character Stien to do their work. As many troopers are ambushed by Davros' little laser gun as are Daleks, and they are interchangeable on a story level.

Not only are the Daleks badly used, they're treated with open contempt. Lytton calls the Daleks stupid to their faces, plots behind their backs and escapes with his life. Davros, their creator, is determined to make a new race of Daleks that aren't as crap as the one that are here. The Daleks explode, froth, melt and disgorge their contents at the slightest provocation. They can't even go through doors without blowing them up first and its painful to see the humans using normal doorways you have to step open while the Daleks have to wait to slide the entire wall back to let them through. The Daleks we discover are, in fact, on the edge of extinction with those rastafarian androids the Movellans completely defeating their enemies off screen.

We're supposed to be impressed by these things? Scared by them? The policemen are more intimidating!

No, the Daleks are as irrelevant to Resurrection as the Doctor.

Maybe it's Davros?

After all, Davros definitely gets a lot of screen time. He's the prisoner who, in an hour after his release, has brainwashed four troopers, a chemist and two Daleks to his cause and sensible created a batch of weapons of mass destruction. Davros also appears, for some reason, to have the moral high ground. The Doctor strides in, picks up a gun and is about to kill this one-armed, blind cripple in a wheelchair.

And Davros stops him using the power of words alone.

Um, forgive me, but the Doctor is the hero of the series, isn't he? Not Davros. Davros is an insane megalomaniac directly responsible for wiping out his own species. Yet the scenes in Resurrection show him cleverer than the Doctor and the Daleks combined. The Doctor is said to be the insane one, rejecting the fact that all sentient life exists merely to beat the crap out of each other. The Doctor said to be the weak one for not murdering a helpless victim right away. Humans are pathetic too, apparently, because we don't slaughter prisoners as soon as look at them.

Of course, Davros gets his comeuppance in the end. But the Doctor doesn't defeat him, or the Daleks, or all the characters united. Davros loses because he is stupid and forgets that a virus designed to wipe out Kaled mutants might just effect his mutated Kaled body.

Well, maybe Resurrection is more concerned with original characters...

Wait a minute, what original characters? We get three groups - Archer, Laird and the troops on Earth, 1984; Mercer, Styles and the prison gang in space, in the future; and Lytton, Stein and the mercenaries. These characters aren't treated particularly reverently. Archer and his gang are systematically killed and then replaced with clones. It takes ages to drain the knowledge of the Doctor and it seems to be important for the victim to be alive, but the Daleks are able to copy and convert several dead soldiers as well in the living in around ten seconds. And why are these perfect copies such crap actors? Why isn't Laird copied?

Now, it strikes me that if you kill off a character and then replace it with a clone, in storytelling terms you might as well not have killed them off at all. Are we supposed to care when the evil cloned soldiers get shot by Daleks? But if it were the original, fighting desperately to keep the Daleks in the warehouse and away from the rest of London, we might actually care.

But we don't. They die. So do a lot of people. A lot of good people, according to Tegan, and it's lucky she tells us that because we certainly don't get a chance to make our own mind up.

Take Mercer and Styles. We get a good chance to know them. A chance, anyway. The first sequence shows Mercer as young, idealistic and rebellious and Styles as tired, desperate and corrupt. The crew of station are more interested in relaxing and playing cards and smoking and laugh aloud at the idea of their workplace actually getting attacked. But in ten minutes Styles is gleefully determined to sacrifice her life on a suicide charge into the Dalek ship, not to mention blowing up the station. In the final battle, she's the first to be shot - which is either shockingly innovative or dramatically pathetic, I'm not sure which. Similarly, Mercer doesn't get any real emotion to his death, he doesn't even scream.

Indeed, there is so much carnage, you wonder if you're supposed to care. The opening scene where a bunch of alien prisoners and a harmless tramp are machine-gunned to death, that's shocking. Like the opening to the author's The Visitation on speed. But then there's another massacre on the space station when the mercenaries gas the workers and the Daleks blast those that are left. By the time Turlough has hopped over the heap of corpses, either trying to prevent infection or stop himself vomiting with a hanky, I think we're fully desensitized. Daleks shoot each other, shoot humans, explode with toothpaste... Tegan seems to be the only one to notice it was a complete bloodbath.

Stein is the only character who dies with a point - and even that's debatable. The Daleks shoot him and luckily his corpse hits the control. And it's ironic because he is the most badly-plotted character there. Why is he with the other prisoners? How come he hides when surely all he has to do is wander into the time corridor for a welcome and that food he's always asking for?

Come to think of it, who are the prisoners at the start of the story? Why are they imprisoned on Earth 1984 in the first place? Why was Lytton's lieutenant so stupid as to arrange for these 'valuable specimens' to be shot dead? Does it matter, if the converter seems able to work on dead bodies? It seems the specimens are to be converted into evil Dalek clones to bring down society... but why try that in the future as well as 1984? Surely if human society collapses in the twentieth century, it won't exist in the twenty-third for other duplicates? What is the plan the Supreme Dalek has to control Davros and why the hell doesn't he use it? Where did Davros get that funky brainwashing gun and why didn't he use it earlier, like when he was arrested? I could complain at the bad continuity between other Dalek stories, but I'll simply ask why Eric Saward was so utterly useless at them after watching every existing Dalek story? Wasn't he paying attention? Was he actually interested in writing this story at all? Was there some subtext that the world needed to know?

Is Resurrection more of a message story? What is it's message? Er...

Well, I think it is that the only way for life kind to go on is to blow up absolutely everything else.

After all, the day is won when Stein blows up the space station, the Daleks, and (apparently) Davros. It's Lytton that survives the story by killing anyone who can stop him. If the humans had blown up Davros, none of this would happen. Its blowing up Daleks that stops them. The Movellan canisters are rubbished by Tegan, Laird and Turlough when they discover they are not bombs and can't blow anything up. The Doctor snatches up bombs and blows up more Daleks.

So, the moral of the story is the only winners are those with superior firepower and no moral scruples.

Remind me, why the hell was this allowed to be shown in Doctor Who? Full frontal nudity has as much place in this program - and at least that's slightly more wholesome! This story was written by the SCRIPT EDITOR of Doctor Who and he couldn't even remember that the Doctor is supposed to show a better way to resolving situations than shooting your enemy in cold blood? Eric Saward recently admitted in DWM that his heart wasn't in Resurrection of the Daleks. Which, considering he had an extension of year to tinker with it, is a damning indictment of his skills.

Now, this isn't to say that Resurrection of the Daleks has no merit. All those involved (bar Saward) give their all to this mess, making such a sleek and polished production that the fans of 1984 were conned into thinking it better than The Caves of Androzani (a fact now treated by people with the same amusement than once people thought the Earth rested on the back of a tortoise). The actors give it their all, the special effects are massive. The moment when the TARDIS takes off carrying Tegan and Turlough to safety is treated with equal respect if not emotion when the Doctor pulls the same trick in The Parting of the Ways.Resurrection of the Daleks continues the harshness of Season 21, and finally shows the characters cracking under the strain of this cruel universe. The Doctor snaps and picks up a gun, while Tegan gives up and walks away. The Time Lord avows to mend his ways and stop any further carnage from now on. The rest of the stories in the season would show how well this progressed.

The Visitation was a story I missed when I watched the series when I was younger and did not get the chance to watch it until it received its release on DVD. From that first DVD viewing though I enjoyed the story right off but that viewing was during a very busy day so I did not get to do my usual ready to enjoy a story ritual of something to eat, something to drink, and sit down with the lights down to enjoy. But even when my attention was elsewhere I could see that I was sorry to not have caught the story when broadcast on my local PBS station in Virginia. I revisited the story on a whim after reading a few comments on the web about how much of a dislike a few people had for the Davidson era of Doctor Who television stories. I totally disagreed with this but thought I should give those stories a look over again. Not having all the stories in my library at home I picked out The Visitation since I only viewed it that one rushed day and sat down with food, drink, and turned down lights and watched the story. 

There are several things, lots to be honest that I enjoy about this story. Even the android with artistic style was cool as pasted in hints at the shades of crashed aliens to Earth who are not just war mongers but have different sides to their culture. The outdoor filming and the sets I thought where very well done. The famed word thrown at Doctor Who all the time I do not see in this story, that word being low budget. Even the other person in my life who came home while I was watching and laughed out loud at the enlarged rat in The Talons Of Weng-Chiang did not make her normal comments about those type of aspects with this story. I think that had more to do with the quality and creativity put into the film and design work of the story than even the story itself. Visually and with atmosphere it can appeal to viewers new and old to the series.

The actors all I think performed well to their characters. The Tardis crew at this time is packed yes by one too many members as just about everyone has said but I thought all put in little touches that worked for theirs characters. Three very young actors is not in my view the way to go in this type of series for many reasons and add another strong character and acting performance in this story in the form of a highwayman and you have companion overload reducing Nyssa to being in the Tardis to build a weapon just in case the android shows up there? And the others left being captured. Adric is the pain I have always argued the character is meant to be but with him just as with Tegan you have to wonder sometimes how anyone could put up with being around them for long periods of time, especially anyone as interesting as the characters of The Doctor and Nyssa. I never did not like the performances or the characters when it comes to Adric and Tegan I more than anything else hated the fact that such an optionally great companion like Nyssa never got to be used properly because of the companion overload.

The story in its basics is very simple and that is why I believe it works more than some other stories because it really lets you enjoy the atmosphere set up for you and gives Davidson as The Doctor moments to really work with. Beings from another world crash land on Earth and chaos comes from that which The Doctor must stop. Simple is not always wrong. My only real problem with the story of Visitation is why must we always have mind-controlled humans or primitives as they often end up being called? I think that is one of those easy outs my professors’ use to red ink me for in college. Plus am I the only one tired of them in science fiction? Besides giving extras work, and I’m all for giving extras work having more than a few friends working within the business at around that level, but I just think the plot could have been raised out from the normal into the best effort from the writer if this connivance would not have been used to travel a story from different points of story to other points. And if you are going to have a big Tardis crew I say why not just make them the brain washed slaves?

I have to single out some thoughts on the 5th Doctor in The Visitation. The 5th Doctor has always been my favorite. Though I grew up enjoying and loving the stories of Tom Baker it was the 5th Doctor and Peter Davidson’s performances which really got me into enjoying the character to the point of wishing to view stories from Doctor’s 1-3. I think in this story he shows that edge that The First Doctor had but mixed with the kindness that I think was within The 2nd Doctor. The 5th Doctor was limited in ways of not being able to delve as much into comedy as his 4th incarnation and with too many companions for most of his run and a lot of stories with loads of promise from which they failed to reach. I think many have looked past his contribution in ways I think are a misjudgment. If anything I look actually at the era of the 5th Doctor on TV as the one which had the most chances at being great but for whatever reasons seems to have fallen short a lot. But when I look back at all the Doctor Who stories it is The 5th Doctor who reminds me that this being is not another character calling himself The Doctor but the same man traveling the universe and inducing rage from lots of people along the way. That point I think is very important to the character to do that without throwing out two much canon facts or being dark and mysterious just to be dark and mysterious.

To end up I say I would give The Visitation a 7 out of 10 for Doctor Who fans and 4 out of 10 for new to the series viewers. Older fans I think will enjoy it if they get past some of the flows with the companion structure and the writer trying to figure out what to do with them. New viewers will maybe get cross eyed at references to Kinda and Tegan’s situation of trying to get home but I think everyone could enjoy this story for what it is and that is one of the best 5th Doctor television stories. If you like Peter Davidson’s acting as The Doctor or are a fan of the way The First Doctor was on screen for that matter give The Visitation a try.

Not one of the more popular Davison tales, this one. Having re-watched it recently, though, I'm not quite sure why it gets panned as much as it does. Certainly it brings back Omega without adding much to his character or pathos, and it's part of the much derided old-monster-fest-instead-of-fresh-ideas phase of the series but it is, nonetheless, quite a solid story. 

Admittedly, the bringing back back to gallifrey in criminal mode only to become a hero bit feels at first like an inferior retread of the Deadly Assassin especially when the game of who's-the-traitor starts (for Hedin read Goth), but there is a different spin on it here- and the detective work by Tegan in Amsterdam keeps things fresh and gives her character a chance to shine. Davison and Nyssa make a good opening team and Nyssa's battles (with tongue and gun!) give her some strong stuff also. The unravelling of the aborted termination of the Doctor makes for an intrgiuing third episode and the Doctor-Omega finale is solid. Yes, the chase basically shows off the location, but so does some stuff in City of Death and that doesn't get hauled over the coals for it. 

It the story lacks anything it's really directorial flair- Something often happening in this 20th season alas. Ron Jones does a competent job, but he had yet to really find his feet- his work on Frontios and Vengeance on Varos would outstrip this by miles. Davison's acting often lends a flair and pace that the direction simply lacks, as if compensating- though having said that the darkly-lit Omega scenes in parts one and two look very impressive. 

Was bringing Omega back worth it? maybe, maybe not- Rassilon might have been a better story subject as we know a lot less about him bar what the New Adventures and Big Finish audios have filled in, and good as they often are, I don't know whether non-TV stuff can really be canonical as the TV series reserves a perfect right to disregard it as it did with The Ancestor Cells' Gallifrey demise. (OK, so I know as far as they knew at he time there never would another TV series, but now there is!We could say canonical till proven otherwise?) Nonetheless they could have picked a worst subject. As part of season 20 this pales beside Snakedance, or Enlightnment, or Mawdryn Undead, but compared with Terminus, Kings Demons, the preceding Time Flight etc...it's really not so bad. Yes, a steal from ASSASSIN in places, but a lot of WHO plots are recycled- and this does enough of its own stuff to stay fresh. An entertaining and underrated story.

With ‘Snakedance,’ the done thing seems to be to say that it’s good, but not as good or smart as ‘Kinda.’ Now, whether one Doctor Who story is truly *better* than another is always going to be a matter of subjectivity, but I think it’s worth pointing out that ‘Snakedance’ stands up extremely well on its own, and is certainly smart. It’s true that writer Christopher Bailey does employ a more conventional storytelling style here than he did in the rich, strange stew that was ‘Kinda,’ but it no less intelligent, and in fact focuses on questions the earlier story ignores (or, at least, doesn’t get around to asking).

First off, one of the best things this story does is capture the Manussan culture itself. It’s always hard to suggest a realistic alien society in what amounts to a mere handful of scenes, and that’s why Doctor Who stories are historically populated by invaders from other worlds who have conveniently lost their home cultures. But the depiction of the Manussans is different – we get a clear picture of a society grown so remote from its own historical origins over half a millennium that its people have largely forgotten them. The account of a terrifying force that once dominated this world has been happily mythologized into ‘safe’ rituals like the ones at the anniversary festival (snake parade, ‘attendant demons,’ children’s Punch and Judy show, etc.). The Manussan people themselves are depicted as cheerfully cynical from the lowest social rank (the fraudulent showman and fortuneteller) up to the highest (Lon seems to question whether the Mara story even happened at all). But the viewer knows better – having seen ‘Kinda,’ *we* know that the Mara’s threat is frightening and real, and this even more than usual puts us on the side of the Doctor – who, in an amusing irony, is as squeaky and ineffective here as at probably any other time in his history (“I do not want more blankets, I want to get out of here!”). To see the Doctor scrambling to get the amiable Manussans to believe him is funny, but it also creates real suspense as we watch the Mara move towards its goal with complete ease.

But ‘Snakedance’ doesn’t simply tell a tense story set in a believable culture – it has real observations to make about reading the past, and somewhat odd ones at that, at least in the context of this series. For in ‘Snakedance’ we see that, for once, it’s the superstitious characters who are in the right, and the skeptical ones who are shown up as fools. This comes into focus in the fascinating character of Ambril, a tunnel-visioned academic with the authority of a government behind him (frightening thing). While the character’s earnestness and archaeological zeal is respectable, even admirable – he’s anything but a mad scientist – he is nevertheless so wrapped up in his own way of viewing the past that he can’t see new history being made around him. He scoffs at the Doctor (who, as I said, is quite a wonderful cracked young man in this story), but we can only suspect he’d act the same way even if the warnings about the Mara came from a more credible source. Ambril likes the past the way it is – frozen in time, preserved for posterity under museum glass. And Bailey’s script does a marvelous job of communicating the character’s smallness (the ‘sixth head’ joke is perhaps a little obvious, but it brings the point to the fore well enough).

The other caste of skeptical character here, of course, is the hereditary ruling elite, represented by bored Lon and his mother Tanha. Both characters are basic upper-class stereotypes, but they become quite full-blooded in the hands of the capable actors; more than that, they function well in the story, both in terms of their service to the plot and their symbolic resonance (as decadent skeptics so modern that they *laugh* at the Mara stories, despite being descended from the family who originally destroyed it!).

So who are the heroes of ‘Snakedance’? The obvious guess is Dojjen, Ambril’s counterpart and philosophical opposite, a scholar who takes such a hands-on approach to his subject that he becomes a true believer, and renounces his shallow culture for a mystic’s life in the wilderness. But the script’s real hero might actually be mild-mannered Chela, a kind of reverse skeptic – a student of science who is nevertheless able to imagine a reality outside his own experience, who begins to question the secular norm he has always known. He is a man with imagination, and Bailey seems to value that more highly than any devotion to science and reason; in fact, it’s implied that the search for knowledge is what created the Mara in the first place. (One senses that Barry Letts would have *loved* a script like this, and I like to think that the blue crystals were included in the plot as a conscious tribute to ‘Planet of the Spiders.’)

As for the aesthetics of the story, the absurd Manussan costumes are always good for a laugh (Lon does look like a refugee from a particularly wild Duran Duran video), and some of the snake effects are a bit sad, but by and large it has the look of classic eighties Doctor Who. Janet Fielding gives a good performance, and she is helped by the sound technicians (her ‘Exorcist’-like sudden voice change – “NO!” – is very effective); and Peter Davison is as wonderful as usual. As is so often the case, Sarah Sutton isn’t given anything to do, but as I can’t stand Nyssa anyway, I don’t mind. Director Fiona Cummings has some good ideas, and helps to make Lon and Tanha into more believable characters than they perhaps are on paper. (When Tanha stands with her back to her son - and the camera – it conveys her hurt better than words or acting ever could). The ending is a little sudden, but for once this abruptness works perfectly – I much prefer an ‘open’ ending like this to a hasty, well-let’s-sum-it-all-up-and-say-goodbye scene like the ones we so often get in this series.

A final thought: after sitting through a sometimes unpleasantly flirtatious first season of Russell T. Davies’s new Who, I found it refreshing to see the classic, sexless Doctor -one who doesn’t even recognize that his pert companion is wearing a new dress!