2000 AD - Road to the Golden Age Part 1 - The Hyper-Hero

In one of the upstairs bedrooms of my house is a hole in the wall. It's a pretty big hole, with a door and a lock and you can climb inside if you want to, although you might need a torch to see properly. But this hole doesn't lead to Narnia, or contain a furry-footed Hobbit. You see, inside this hole is my childhood - well some of it. Inside this hole is my 2000 AD collection.

It's a pictorial treasure trove which has also measured the passage of the last 38 years of my life - all the way back to 1977. Like my life, the comic has had it's ups and downs and the quality has varied. It would be impossible to produce a weekly publication containing five (sometimes more) strips without some duffers sprinkled through it's history. But, as with many other comics, 2000 AD also has had a period where all the stars were in alignment and every single story and every single issue was just about perfect. An era of the magazine that is fondly remembered and spoken of in hushed tones of reverence. A Golden Age.

Now it could be argued that 2000 AD has had several 'Golden Ages' throughout its long history. Every time it seems to lose it's way, it regenerates itself and comes back with renewed vigour.  It's always gaining new readers who have discovered it's delights for the first time and losing others as people grow up, change and move onto other things. The Progs published right now in 2015 may well be someone's Golden Age.

My own personal one had a long gestation period  - around three and a half years in fact, dating all the way back to those first fledgling issues in 1977. In this multi-part post I'm going to be taking a look at my favourite things from those early days and then examining in depth each story from my Golden Age and trying to explain why I thought it was so perfect. It all started with:

The Bronze Age (well I had to call it something...):
It's easy to say when this Age began - it's Prog 1. My view is that it ends with Prog 85.
Why here? Well it's the final issue before the merger with "Starlord". It's the first time we get all the stories concluding at the same time (admittedly Robo-Hunter had just just ended Part 1 of  the "Verdus" storyline the previous week before going on a 15 issue break). Plus of course it's the last part of the very first Judge Dredd mega-epic "The Cursed Earth".

When you look at many of the strips in this first period, they could be considered as spiritual successors to the types of stories from the original run of Action comic - the war story told from a new perspective (Invasion), the future sports story (Harlem Heroes / Inferno), natures creatures getting their own back on man (Flesh / Shako), even a rip off of a popular TV show (M.A.C.H.1).  But to class these as mere carbon copies of previous ideas is doing a disservice to the huge imagination and power contained in these issues. I read this first run of comics over and over again during 1977 / 1978, probably more than almost any other before or since. It might not yet be my Golden Age but it sure as hell made a huge and lasting impression on me.

There are so many highlights - images than have stayed with me for decades. That back-page reveal of Harlem Heroes team member Louis Mayer as a disembodied brain.The huge hairy spiders invading the Trans-Time base in "Flesh". Shako biting a man's head off in his first episode. The early work from Brian Bolland on Prog 23's Supercover Saga "The Plague From Pluto". Sam Slade blasting his way through crazed robots with a gun-toting baby on his shoulder. I could find something to talk about in every one of those first 85 Progs. But rather than just reproduce all the comics, I'll share two pages:

That's Artie Gruber, cyborg nemesis of the Harlem Heroes. I found this picture just terrifying. Perhaps shades of Al Rico from "Death Game 1999" in Action comic?
I can see a pattern developing here. My 10 year old self sure didn't like cyborgs!

Here we have friendly Frank Hart, The Visible Man. Just a genius idea with fabulous art by Carlos Trigo.

Of course there were some more "average" strips during these first 85 issues as well (although nothing in 2000 AD could ever really be called average): Colony Earth, Death Planet, Ant Wars, M.A.C.H. Zero, Walter The Wobot, the first ever Future Shocks, Bonjo From Beyond The Stars. Not every one can had astounding art or a ground breaking story but they were still damn good fun.This is also the time when Dredd starts to become firmly placed as the most popular character in the comic. The origins, history and early stories of the Dredd universe have been covered many times by others better than me, so I don't intend to dwell much on them here. However being there from the very start meant I got to read those infamous 'Cursed Earth' episodes featuring Ronald McDonald , the Jolly Green Giant, the Michelin Man and Colonel Saunders. Due to copyright infringement these can never be reprinted, so future generations will miss out on some stunning art from Mick McMahon and Brian Bolland. The thing is though, amongst all the plaudits for 'The Cursed Earth' and the fleshing out of Dredd's world, it's easy to overlook the other real gem from that first year and half - Dan Dare.

The purists might say that the character debuting in Prog 1 was Dare in name only. He had a different face (explained away by an accident), lived in a different time, had none of his normal supporting characters. With that widows peak and Spock-like eyebrows he looked almost as alien as the creatures he faced. I didn't care. I knew nothing about that other Dare from the 1950's. I was only ten years old - and my father was born too early to read it himself. All I cared about was that those first two Dare tales featured some of the strangest worlds, weirdest technology and most exotic creatures I had ever seen in in a science fiction story. And the art - oh my goodness the art! The genius that was Massimo Bellardinelli was the perfect fit. Just take a look at this selection of colour double page spreads if you need any convincing:

 

See what I mean? Just mind-blowing stuff. The stories (predominately by Pat Mills and the late great Steve Moore) matched the art for weirdness. Forgive my indulgence but here's a brief (ish) synopsis:

In the first tale, Dare loses his ship and crew over Jupiter's Red Spot, although no on believes his explanation about an alien force hiding there. Awaiting court-martial, he escapes and stows away on the Odyssey, commanded by Martian Mr. Monday. While in orbit around Jupiter, Dare tries to explain himself to Monday, just as the ship is attacked by a bizarre looking "Thing" which appears from nowhere. Dare manages to subdue it and travels with Monday down to Jupiter's surface to investigate, where they find the alien "Biogs". Hailing from the planet Zircon, these utterly strange bug-like creatures communicate by changing colour and have developed a society on a biological basis - even their craft and weapons are alive! The Biogs intend to subjugate the Earth to convert it's population into living fuel for the Mother Biog.

Meanwhile up in orbit on the Odyssey, the Thing (known as a Shepard) awakens and seizes control, piloting the cruiser inside one of the Biogs living spaceships. Fighting his way free using a living axe, Dare manages to get into space and inside the alien craft. He tricks the spaceships telepathic brain into thinking he is betraying his race, before using the Odyssey to burn a half mile wide hole in the living flesh and escape - only to find that this ship was just the advance party of a whole Biog fleet.

An insane battle with the Earth defence force ensues, in which the Biogs fling the moon's of Jupiter around like pebbles to decimate the Earthmen. Desperate, Dare embarks on a suicide run firing tachyon torpedoes at the grotesque Biog vessels  but it's not enough. Commander Monday realises there is only one option and sacrifices himself and the Odyssey by activating his star drive and sucking the Biogs behind him into the heart of the sun. Back on Earth, Dare is discredited and lets Monday take the posthumous credit for the victory. He has a bigger concern - who told the Biogs where to find Earth?

Prog 12 starts with Dare returning to the UK, now a theme park circling the world every three years and home to hundreds of alien tourists. He meets the wolf-man Rok, and agrees to join his ship, the Titan 1C, as navigator. Meanwhile beyond the galactic rim, a Skash boarding party finds a drifting prison ship containing just one occupant - Dan Dare's infamous nemesis, the Mekon!. Taken before the dual headed creature known as The Two of Verath, the Venusian genius persuades them to join forces with him to conquer the galaxy.

Out in space, the Titan 1C's 's Faster-Than-Light drive breaks down and the crew are flung into the heart of a red giant star, only to find a planet hidden within -  the Two of Verath's secret base (that was lucky!). Captured by the alien / weapon hybrid Skash, Dare is brought before the Mekon, who fails to recognise him due to his new face - until the Titan's captain O'Grady rats him out. Subjecting Dare to the telepathic powers of "the Blob", the Mekon confirms that this is indeed his age old enemy before feeding him to flesh eating maggots...

Escaping the trap thanks to help from wolf-man Rok, Dare realises that the Mekon's plan is to allow a hypnotised Two of Verath to be captured and interrogated by the Galactic Council, before detonating a huge bomb hidden in their body. Fighting their way free of the Hollow World and past sceptical guards, the heroes make their way to the council chambers on the planet Congress only to discover that it was a waste of time as the council members (composed of pure thought) already knew the Mekon's plan and have sent the (un-hypnotised) Two of Verath back for revenge. Stowing away on their ship, Dare and Rok make a deal with the mutant and together they attack the Mekon, as the Hollow World's forcefield is destroyed and the planet starts to explode around them.

Narrowly escaping the starquake, Dare and Rok think that is the end of the Mekon, not realising that he and the Two of Verath are trapped in an escape capsule with no way out and only each other for company...

Sincere apologies for those lengthy recaps but I love these two initial storylines so much that its easy to get carried away. The sheer ingenuity and artistry on display is staggering. Forget Dredd. For those first 23 issues Dan Dare was the number one character, and deservedly so. He even got his own separate Poster Magazine which reproduced some of Belardinelli's artwork in stunning glossy full colour along with a history of the character.

Following this titanic battle, Dan Dare disappeared (as Tharg says above) from the Progs for a "rest". Returning from this brief hiatus in Prog 28, the strip undergoes something of a metamorphosis. Having previously worked on the future sports strip 'Harlem Heroes', rising star Dave Gibbons becomes the new artist, with Bellardinelli swapping places to illustrate the 'Heroes' sequel 'Inferno' (and a great job he did of it too). Gone as well is the undercurrent of bizarre alien outlandishness, replaced with a more traditional set of gritty stories pitting Dare and his new crew of thugs and criminals against the 'The Lost Worlds'. This longer run of loosely linked episodes is a bit more "generic SF", with the hero flying through space in his 'fortress' starship, encountering an array of aliens and monsters such as living sand storms, carnivorous plants, undersea monsters, vampires on a Rome-inspired planet (complete with heart shaped continent), doppelgangers and ice world denizens.

The strip began in it's usual spot in the centre colour spread but part way through moved to the front cover, mirroring the position the original Dan Dare occupied in the 'Eagle' comics of the 1950s. At the heart of the 60+ issue run was a 16-part epic pitting Dare against the might of the Star-Slayer Empire and their emperor, the Dark Lord (replete with goatee beard and twirling moustache).

(Not influenced by Star Wars, no not at all...)

Dan Dare lost the cover and any colour in the strip in Prog 59 but Gibbons remained the artist for almost the entire run, excepting a beautiful hallucinatory three-part fill in by Brian Lewis on the "Nightmare Planet"

Despite the strip no longer being the outlandish marvel of those first 23 issues, it was still a great read. The scripts by Gerry-Finley Day and Jack Adrian were full of peril and thrilling cliff-hangers and some excellent supporting characters in "Bear" (a Russian giant) and "Hitman" (who had a gun welded to his hand). Even though the Dave Gibbons art is perhaps more traditional compared to Bellardinelli, it's still undeniably excellent. What's also interesting is that even with the more episodic nature, the strip did have an underlying narrative as the constant dangers of the Lost Worlds began to take their toll on the crew. Although you had the usual "red shirt" characters suffering grisly deaths in the name of plot twists, as time went on it turned out that no one was safe. Dare was also loosing ground to Judge Dredd in the popularity stakes and the "Cursed Earth" saga was just around the corner in Prog 61.

Things began to turn dark and come to a head when the crew visited a supposed "Garden of Eden" which turned out to be a trap by the giant worm-like Sleetha and their brain-sucking plant creatures. "Pilot" is seriously injured and Gunnar Johannssen left mindless and extremely violent. The stresses of this battle spill over when the recovering "Pilot" is shockingly killed by being crushed between two asteroids and chief tech Haskings leads a mutiny to take control of the space fortress, turning the crew against each other. To make matters worse Gunnar breaks loose and has a obsessional desire to kill Dan Dare.

I vividly remember being shocked by that panel. This is long before killing off popular characters was a common occurrence and it lent a real sense of unpredictability to the strip. With Dare reduced to hiding in the conduits and crawlspaces of his own ship and half the crew plus a homicidal maniac out to get him, you really didn't know how the hero would get out of this one. Of course after several episodes and with help from the loyal "Hitman" and "Bear" Dare did survive, and the journey through the Lost Worlds continued. But the worst (and the strangest) was yet to come.

Suddenly in Prog 79 things changed. Dave Gibbons clean art is replaced by the moody linework of Trevor Goring and Garry Leach. The script is by "Henry Miller", who seems to have watched too much Star Trek as the story even starts with a "Captain's Log" and shore leave for the crew plus a talking ships computer! (Nick Landau & Roy Preston soon take over). The sombre tone continues as the planet Altair IV is blown up and as the crew search for a cause, "Bear" goes berserk for no reason and four crewmen are expelled into the vacuum. All power to the space fort then vanishes and it is sucked into a interior of a gigantic starship floating in deep space. What follows is one of the most famous panels in the story as they enter a spaceship graveyard.

It's just a fantastic cornucopia of Science Fiction ships and creations of the past including nods to the very first Biog story 80 issues ago and even the Dare strips of the 1950s (the Anastasia). There's even the hint of an X-Wing in the bottom left.

Encountering other trapped humans and a race of primitive wildmen, Dare and what's left of his colleagues find no trace of a crew, just a strange mechanical creature and what looks like exhibits in an extraordinary alien zoo. Led deeper into the ship by a mysterious voice communicating with youngest team member "The Kid" (who strangely had never even been mentioned before this story), they only escape the clutches of a gigantic furry creature when Russian strongman "Bear" sacrifices himself. Finally they reach the inner sanctum to find what's controlling the ship - The Last Of The Golden Ones.

As you can see above, Dave Gibbons returned for the final double length episode in which the history of the Golden Ones and their terrible ship is revealed. Activating a self-destruct mechanism, Dare and his friends dash for the space forts shuttle craft (they still have power), but "Hitman" is stabbed by the primitives and holds them off so Dan can escape. Slipping through the air lock hatch at the last second, Dare makes it into space, but the "Doomsday Machine" explodes around him...

It's an odd story to end the run on, and it's scripted almost as if the writers had the names and basic outlines of the characters but had not read any of the previous 50+ issues worth of stories - and just dropped them into a somewhat basic Star Trek plot. As much as I have accused the "Lost Worlds" run of stories of being more generic SF than the craziness of the first two strips, they still had creativity and flair and more than a little of the "daring-do" of the original 1950s tales. By comparison "The Doomsday Machine" doesn't quite feel the same. It's a brave try nonetheless at something a bit more melancholy and is saved of course by the stunning art of Goring and Leach. Plus you have to admit that it's one hell of a cliffhanger to end the story on!

Happily, 2000 AD owners Rebellion have recently announced that these early "hyper-hero" Dare strips will finally be collected in two hardback books, complete with full colour pages. I can't wait. Dan Dare wouldn't return until the landmark Prog 100 and despite valiant efforts by some excellent creators would never achieve the same levels of greatness, nor would it ever be my favourite strip again. We'll get to that in the next part of this journey towards my Golden Age...


N.B. All images used in this post are copyright Rebellion / the creators / the Dan Dare Corporation  / whoever owns them and are used for review purposes only. Thanks.

The 800 Day Project - Re-record, Not Fade Away

So this post was meant to be the season 18 overview, but more pressing things have had to take priority. Instead I thought I'd briefly touch on my memories of something else that happened during that same period. Another seismic shift in my life that fundamentally affected my ongoing love affair with Doctor Who...

....

It's 1980. A new decade and everything is changing. I officially become a teenager. Pirate radio station Radio Caroline ceases transmission when their boat sinks. Margaret Thatcher is reshaping the country with unemployment at over 2 million and inflation rising to nearly 22%. Clive Sinclair creates the home computer market by releasing the ZX80. In the world of Doctor Who, it's Season 18 and John Nathan-Turner's new broom sweeps away the old look of the show.

A couple of month's ago I talked about "The Gap" where I stopped watching Doctor Who for twelve weeks in 1977 / 1978 in favour of the dubious delights of Patrick Duffy as the "Man From Atlantis". Now in 1980 it was the turn of Glen A Larson's "Buck Rogers In The 25th Century", to distract me from my favourite Timelord.

Clearly riding on the coat tails of the Star Wars phenomenon, the show was the closest thing we had to a small screen equivalent. Briefly, the story was that NASA astronaut William "Buck" Rogers (played by cheesily handsome Gil Gerard) embarks on a deep space mission in 1987. When something goes wrong, he is frozen in a kind of cryogenic suspension, only to be woken up in the year 2491. Teaming up with Earth Defence Directorate Colonel Wilma Deering, "ambuquad" robot Twiki and super computer Dr. Theopolis (a kind of posher, rounder version of Blake's 7's Orac), Buck battles smugglers, slavers, kidnappers and evil warlords plus a continuing struggle against the Draconian Empire, personified by the scantily clad Princess Ardala (the magnificent Pamela Hensley).

The show was a big hit, with it's combination of attractive leads, humour, fisticuffs and memorable characters (particularly Twiki with his "Biddi-biddi-biddi" catchphrase). It also had pretty good special effects for the space dog-fight sequences - even though it blatantly reused sets, spaceships and sound effects from Larson's previous show "Battlestar Galactica". Another plus was that it had an excellent title sequence and, like "Battlestar", an equally hum-able theme tune:

Although the theatrical pilot version with lyrics and space-bikini-clad women has to be seen to be believed:

Hmmmm. They certainly don't make them like that anymore...

With only one television in the house, I had to chose which show to watch - and the flashier, sexier "Buck Rogers" won (look I'm sorry okay? I was 13 and Princess Ardala was so very attractive). This meant that I completely missed the first eight weeks of Doctor Who season 18, and only caught up with those stories much later. The thing is, "Buck Rogers" continued for a full 22 week season, so how did I get my fix of Wilma Deering *and* see the first appearance of the mighty Adric? It was the arrival of something incredibly important that would change my life forever. You've probably guessed by now - it was this:

(not the actual one we rented, obviously)

Yes the humble video recorder had arrived at my house. It's hard to imagine in the current world of fifty inch LCD screens and DVD players for £25 that back in the 1980s these were incredibly expensive machines. We weren't a wealthy family, so like many, many others at the time, we rented our main television and video recorder from a company like Granada or Radio Rentals (I can't remember the exact shop). For a monthly price you got the latest TV and video and if it broke down or was superseded by a superior model, it could be repaired or replaced as part of the package.

Now the eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that the recorder pictured above is not one of the all conquering VHS models. No, it's a Philips Video 2000 VCR2020. My dad has always been interested in new technology and electronics, but he doesn't have a great track record of backing the winning horse. When satellite TV first started and many houses were getting Sky dishes fitted, we got BSB and the "squariel" (not that I am complaining because they showed tons of very old Doctor Who). The Philips '2000' range was actually the third horse in the video format race along with VHS and Betamax, even though it only shone brightly for a very short period of time. The VCR2020 was technically a superior system in many ways to VHS, with double sided tapes that allowed you to record up to eight hours of television on a single cassette and excellent picture and sound quality (well for the time anyway). It looked incredibly futuristic with it's digital displays and keypad.

At last I could watch both the SF shows I liked. I clearly remember setting the machine up to record  Doctor Who - finger hovered over the pause button so that it would start recording at exactly the right moment and I would have no gaps or other extraneous material on my prized tape. Once recording I would quickly switch the television over to ITV to catch the latest adventure of Buck, Wilma and Twiki. To be honest, that show could be watched and then forgotten about til next week, but Doctor Who - I could watch it again and again! Consequently the last four stories of season 18 became the first Doctor Who that I can remember seeing many times (there were the summer / winter omnibus repeats during the late 1970s of course and although I must have watched some of those, the memories are lost to the mists of time or so jumbled up with repeated BSB / UK Gold / video viewings that I can't separate them out).

Eventually about a year later we did succumb to market forces and the VCR2020 went back to the rental shop to be replaced by a VHS model, and those few tapes we had were incompatible and useless. It didn't matter though (much). I'd probably already worn them out through repeated viewings by then anyway. What it started though was an interest (that became a near obsession) with recording everything I could. I'll come back to this some more at a later date.

To end with I'll just mention the reason for the title of this post. Obviously it's a play on the Rolling Stones' "Not Fade Away", but it's more than that. In the mid-eighties (long after the demise of Video 2000 and the domination of VHS) there was a series of very catchy TV adverts promoting Scotch VHS video tapes which featured a dancing skeleton. The idea was that your recordings on Scotch tapes would last so long that they would still be playable long after you were nothing more than a collection of old bones. In fact Scotch were so confident that they offered a lifetime replacement guarantee. Thirty years later video tapes are mostly consigned to the history books (although some things have *still* never been released on DVD), but in recognition of the enormous part they played in my life (and the fact that I had hundreds of Scotch tapes) here's one of those ads...

The 800 Day Project - Day 506 to 525 - Second Genesis

Destiny Of The Daleks through to The Horns Of Nimon

There are going to be somewhat shorter comments from me this time round, but I wanted to touch on something important first. Something changed with season 17. I don't mean with the show (the massive shakeup was still a year away), but with me. I started to enjoy the show even more than before. Why?  I had always been a fan since a young age but now my interest stepped up a gear. Maybe it's because I was twelve years old when the show came back in September 1979. Maybe I was growing up (slowly)?  Actually, I think I *can* pinpoint the exact reason and the exact date. Thursday 11th October 1979. Three words. Doctor Who Weekly.

Now I'm not going to wax lyrical here about what Doctor Who Weekly meant to me or the undiluted love I still have for those early issues - that will come in time I'm sure. But I will say this: apart from a couple of school acquaintances, I didn't know anyone else who liked the show. There was no internet. No forums. I never went to a convention or joined DWAS. It was just something I really liked in amongst all the SF and fantasy novels and the other genre TV and the comics (which were my real love to be fair). My prior exposure to the show was just the transmitted episodes and the Target novelisation's. But  whether it was the comics strips, the articles or a combination of both, Doctor Who Weekly took the feelings I had for the TV series and multiplied them tenfold.

So, because of that, although season 17 may not be considered one of the best by a lot of people, it will always have an special place in my memory. This is where I began my second stage of fandom...

Destiny Of The Daleks

A new season, a new Romana and the humour aspect of the Graham Williams era has never been more obvious. The regeneration at the start is clearly meant to parody the start of "Robot" when the Fourth Doctor goes through all those costume changes. It's a fun scene which luckily stops before it gets annoying. Having Romana's costume mirror the Doctor's is also a nice touch - reinforcing the concept of how much influence the Doctor has had on the once aloof Time Lady.

The idea of an impasse between two warring races who base all their decisions on pure logic is a fascinating one, although I'm not entirely sure the Daleks are that coldly computerised - they've always seemed to be extremely emotional beings to me, like any good fanatic. Terry Nation seems to have forgotten the origin he crafted for them just  few short years ago. With a bit of hand waving you can forgive this though - a lot can happen in the years since "Genesis". The Daleks casings have seen better days though, with some of them looking like they belong in that scrap yard in Totter's Lane.

The Movellans are a funky bunch aren't they? Obviously they've been getting transmissions of Top Of The Pops and the film "10" in deepest outer space, because the android race have based their look on Bo Derek meets Boney M. Being on the zeitgeist of fashion doesn't mean they have the brains to match -  somehow they overlooked the obvious design flaw of putting your power pack on your belt so that it can be knocked off all too easily.

The resurrected Davros doesn't quite have that same presence of the single minded scientist consumed by power and vitriol and hate. David Gooderson makes him sound too normal and sane, and the few rants he has are less powerful because of it. His confrontations with the Doctor are well done, but it's hardly the classic intellectual battle of wills from "Genesis".

I'm difficult to please when it comes to humour in Doctor Who. Although I love the clever wordplay and outright silliness of the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, I don't think Douglas Adams always managed to translate it well into the Doctor Who universe. Many of the stories in this season do get the balance between light and shade right, but this story is a prime example of where it doesn't work a lot of the time - Adams and Nation make strange bedfellows. The Daleks are treated as a bit of a joke really, with the Doctor memorably telling them to "Spack Off !". I much prefer it when they are scheming and manipulative. When the funniest scene is a scissors-paper-stone game, something is clearly out of kilter.

All that aside, there are some positives in this story. The quarry locations work well as the blasted surface of Skaro and the sets for the Movellan ship are not bad. The direction and the camera work are of a fairly high standard too - this was the first time they used a steadicam wasn't it? As the initial story of the season and the first appearance of the Daleks since "Genesis" it's overall....okay. There is nothing astoundingly original here but then Terry Nation did like a recycled plot....

City Of Death

So this is that moment that Graham Williams was searching for. The point where plot and characterisation and actors and locations and music score all come together to make something truly special. Dialogue where the one-liners come fast and furious and hit the mark just about every single time. ("You're a beautiful woman, probably", "Garçon, two glasses of water. Make them doubles!", "I say, what a wonderful butler. He's so violent"") Where the worst excesses of Tom Baker's ego were contained to make his portrayal of the Doctor an amalgam of all the good points of the last few seasons. It's almost perfect.

It's extremely difficult to find fault with this story, as so much of it works so well. But let's be honest, those Parisian chase scenes do go on a bit too long - seeming a bit gratuitous just to justify the expense of travelling to the French capital - and the resolution to defeating Scaroth, Last of the Jaggaroth (you have to use his full title every time you know) is just a teensy bit underwhelming. I'm being extremely picky though. Most of the time while watching this story I just had a big grin on my face.

All the supporting cast are good (even though I preferred Catherine Schell as the sexy alien Psychon Maya in Space:1999), but I have to give special mention to Julian Glover and Tom Chadbon. Scarlioni is a genuinely menacing presence - an ice cold alien mind hidden beneath a suave mannered exterior, much like his true face is hidden by that dimensionally transcendental mask. Glover also brings subtle differences to each of his splintered selves. It's a masterclass in brilliant acting. Duggan on the other hand is a man who knows he is completely out his depth, but uses his skills as a policeman and a talent for thumping people to fumble his way alongside this pair of apparent nutcases. He's utterly useless and yet still hugely lovable.

Look, there's not much point me waffling on about how fantastic this story is. You know it is. I know it is. Tom Baker knew it was when he made it (probably). 
I'll never tire of watching it.


The Creature From The Pit

This is a story which I think is unfairly maligned amongst some areas of Doctor Who fandom. They seem to solely focus on the somewhat poor realisation of Erato and that infamous green phallus shaped appendage, missing what is actually a pretty good tale of exploitation and control of rare resources. When I first saw this story back in 1979 I didn't even really register the infamous scene where the Doctor communicates with the creature. Only later viewings have highlighted that it was perhaps ill-advised. Erato actually makes for a refreshing change from the usual gamut of humanoid-like monsters that speak English. When was the last time we had a truly 'alien' creature (one that is all brain in fact) that the Doctor couldn't communicate with? The bulbous looking ambassador to Chloris is not even the real threat anyway. The Doctor himself gives Erato the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming he / it is out to absorb everyone.

Incidentally I found it interesting that the name Erato comes from the Greek muse of romantic and erotic poetry and that his home planet Tythonus (possibly) derives from the multi-headed beast Typhon. I know Graham Williams liked his classics, but I hadn't appreciated that sometimes the delvings into mythology were more subtle - just a name rather than cribbing whole sagas.

Tom Baker gives a strong performance and again seems to be balancing the humourous and the serious more effectively. I love the little scene where the Doctor is hanging precariously onto the side of The Pit and pulls out "Everest In Easy Stages", only to find it is written in Tibetan - so he then produces a Teach Yourself Tibetan book! The change in K-9's voice to David Brierly is very noticeable (explained away in the previous story as "laryngitis"). Whereas before he was a lovable robotic pet keen to provide information, now he sounds like a stuck up head boy, exasperated at having to deal with the lower mortals and their nuisances. Come back John Leeson!  Romana fairs poorly too. It's obvious that, as this was Lalla Ward's first filmed story, the script was written for Mary Tamm. Lalla seems very uncomfortable and unnatural and is back at her "Armageddon Factor" levels of acting skill (i.e. terrible in parts).

As for the guest actors, Adrasta is a great convincing villainess - completely ruthless in her desire to control all the metal on Chloris. She'll throw anyone into the pit for the slightest infraction. I also love the silver headpiece clamped to the sides of her face and the way she slaps Romana violently around the face. The hairy bandits however are utterly pointless to the story and are only there to get that communicator thing off the wall and into the pit in time for part four. Geoffrey Bayldon on the other hand is just wonderful as the astronomer Organon. True, his character doesn't have a lot to do and you don't feel empathy for him in the same way as say, Binro The Heretic, but he is nevertheless always charmingly diverting. I've always loved him as an actor and he would have made a fantastic Doctor (he turned the TV role down twice but did play the part in two Big Finish "Unbound" plays), His acting legacy in genre TV is secure anyway, in the three great roles of Catweazle, Organon and the Crowman from Worzel Gummidge.

Other positives? Well, the jungle sets are damn good, extremely well lit and very atmospheric. It helps that they are shot on film rather than video. The costumes are nice too, with a late medieval vibe. I even like the Wolfweeds. Negatives? The most obvious one is that strange double ending. Adrasta is defeated and the creature is released (even though I'm not quite sure how he is going to get that massive bulk out of the pit to "spin" a new ship. Come to think of it how on earth did Adrasta get Erato in there in the first place?). All is well. But  - oh crap - we're running ten minutes short. Quick, concoct another threat using the Tythonian ship coming to rescue Erato and some technobabble about a neutron star. It makes little sense and totally undermines the original idea that Erato and his people are not hostile. I suppose you could argue that it shows that the Doctor never did trust Erato completely and maybe it was planned that way from the beginning, but in any case it it seemed a rush job.

Overall though this story is a thoroughly acceptable and enjoyable adventure and not the disaster the majority seem to think it is.


Nightmare Of Eden

Written by a solo Bob Baker, this is actually streets ahead of most of the scripts he did with Dave Martin. Partly I think it's because it doesn't try and cram in too many wacky ideas and concepts, but concentrates on telling a good solid adventure. There's a lot of novel things going on (drug smuggling, the ships crashing together in hyperspace, the CET machine, aliens turning into an addictive substance when they die), but it's never unclear, and it all fits together really well. The other major factor is that the characterisation of the Doctor is just superb. We get the cosmic wanderer who is "just having fun" to the moral crusader who is absolutely appalled by the treatment of the Mandrels and the manufacture of a drug as destructive as Vraxoin. He is rightly disgusted at what Tryst has done. The coldly delivered line "Just go away" as Tryst is taken into custody at the end is magnificent (its power only slightly diluted by the "My arms! My legs! My everything!" Tom-foolery).

A lot has been made by some fans of the troubled nature of the production, the poor costumes and the supposedly less than stellar performances of the supporting cast. Yes I guess Tryst does have a peculiar accent but, well, lots of planets have people who talk oddly. To be honest I didn't find his voice distracting at all and the fact that he's an all too human protagonist just out for profit (albeit at the expense of the suffering of millions of drug addicts) is a refreshing change from the megalomaniacs and blacker than black scoundrels. The two customs men in their spangly leather are less successful - the officious busybody being a terrible cliché.

The slice of Eden taken into the CET machine is an nice piece of design - dark, damp, claustrophobic and very eerie, especially when you know that a horde of hulking monsters is out there somewhere -  not to mention shadowy glimpses of a more human set of eyes peering out of the gloom. I don't care what anyone else thinks - I like the Mandrels. I remember being quite spooked by those huge glowing eyes and that enormous clam shaped mouth. Okay so the bottom half looks it belong more on a 1970s cruise ship entertainer and the droopy arms are a mistake, but if I was going to quibble about every slightly dodgy looking creation in Doctor Who we'd be here all night (there are exceptions which will never ever get a pass, as we'll find out in a few months). Sadly they do work best in the dark, losing any menace once out in the light of the ship corridors. They're like over-enthusiastic giant puppies that just might hug you to death, galumphing along in the hope of a fleshy biscuit. Just me that finds them cute then?

The Horns of Nimon

This is the worst Doctor Who story ever. That's what "received wisdom" would have you believe. Most of the season 17 adventures have taken a critical drubbing in one way or another over the years and "Horns Of Nimon" has been on the sharp pointy end of that. It does contain many of the same trait's of the earlier stories, including a somewhat unconvincing monster. But, also like the other stories, there is a decent plot underneath. In fact there is a lot to love.

That this is a another chapter in Graham Williams's Big Book of Greek Myths is obvious. The parallels with the tale of Theseus are plain for all to see - but that's not where the interesting stuff really lies.The Nimon are apparently like locusts, but I think they can be compared to a virus, spreading from world to world rather than body to body, leaving nothing but a burnt out husk in their wake. I also like that they trick their way onto unsuspecting planets by promising great power  - just what the Skonnon's need in their quest to build a glorious new empire and dominate their sector of space. They even get the unsuspecting locals to build their matter transmitter for them! They are utterly evil, with no redeeming features whatsoever. The budgetary limitations may be obvious, but I still like the design of the Nimon. The heads work better than the rest of them (let's not talk about the 'lioncloth') and their voices are very distinctive. Their lumbering platform shoe walk with arms outstretched is perhaps a bit odd and the roaring may be taking the bull analogy a bit far, but if you are hiding in the dark of their circuit board maze they are still pretty scary.

Soldeed, played by the always entertaining Graham Crowden, is a much-criticised element, but I won't hear a word said against him, his deluded fantasies of power beyond imagining  and his fawning in the presence of "Lord Nimon". Yes he's chewing the scenery with relish, but he's not annoying like the terrible Pirate Captain from the previous season. Soldeed doesn't just steal every scene he is in, he bundles it up and runs away, eyes bulging out of their sockets and  laughing madly about the "journey of life". He even gibbers like a maniac when he is about to die ("My dreams of conquest!!!"). He's just majestically wonderful and infinitely quotable. Perhaps he seems larger than life because much of the rest of the cast are so bland (especially the tediously dull Seth and Teka).

 (Soldeed's so great he gets two pictures)

The only other character that makes a decent impression is the co-pilot (he doesn't even get a name). I genuinely love the way the blundering oaf opens the cargo doors to the Aneth tributes, bellows "Weakling scum!" and then closes the door again. It's his catchphrase for dealing with the "sacrifices", the Doctor - basically anyone he doesn't like or who tries to get him to actually do anything. "Weakling scum!" is the only comment the bully makes, because he just loves having someone to push around.

I've been quite critical of some previous stories for wishy-washy story lines, poor production values or hammy acting, so why does "Horns of Nimon" get away with it? The reality is that it doesn't care whether you like it or not. It takes itself very seriously but at the same time winks at you as if to say "Isn't this fun?". The plot devices may be a staple of Doctor Who, the sets might be cheaper than usual, the monster might have a papier mache head, but it has so much entertainment value that it's good enough to surpass the poorer parts and you can't help but like it. Amongst all of season 17, I think it vies with City of Death as being my favourite.


Next time, it's all change as JN-T takes charge...

The 800 Day Project - Day 496 to 505 - The Key Part 3

The Power Of Kroll through to The Armageddon Factor

I'm trying to rattle through these "800 Day Project" posts for the next couple of weeks, as I'm conscious that I am quite a long way behind compared to the episodes I am currently watching. The next update will probably cover all of season 17 in one go. The problem is that as the seasons get shorter - with no more six parters on the horizon - I am watching almost two stories a week, but only updating the blog once a week. I might have to do something about that, perhaps by switching to only capsule reviews or finding a way to sleep less so I can update twice a week. We'll see. For now it's back to the final two stories of the search for the Key To Time - and things are not going well...

The Power Of Kroll

Bow down and chant "Kroll" a hundred and fifty times in a row - it's the biggest monster Doctor Who has every seen. Plus it's the first story this season where the segment of the Key is intrinsic to the plot. Indeed it's the segment that caused the whole mess in the first place. It's a terrible disappointment then when the usually excellent Robert Holmes turns in a script this derivative and tedious.

Basically it's a base under siege story, packed full of all the clichés one would expect. The arrogant expedition leader who is going slowly insane and sees the indigenous life forms as nothing more than obstacles in the way of profit that need to be wiped out. The Doctor immediately being suspected of being the problem. The junior officer who makes a stand and gets shot for daring to speak out. An unimportant crewmember who gets killed by the monster of the week. A nail-biting countdown that can only be solved by the Doctor. Then you have the Holmes creative tics. The morally dubious gun-runner. The local natives worshipping something they don't understand. Some surprisingly grisly deaths at the hands of the giant cephalopod and the Swampies. It just never all comes together into a cohesive whole. You just don't care about any of the characters to shed a tear if they live or die. There are no witty double acts either and although I'll happily give Holmes kudos for trying something outside his more gothic horror comfort zone, in this case there is just not enough to make up the difference.

Add in some flat pedestrian direction and a few less that special effects (It's beyond me how Graham Williams ever thought he could make a three-hundred foot high squid look remotely convincing, but you have to admire his ambition) and you have a story that is not spoken of in hushed tones of reverence but often in mocking tones of derision. I wouldn't go that far - but it's certainly well below par. It's just...dull.

It's also a criminal (under) use of some fine actors. I hardly recognised the great John Abineri under the fright wig and green makeup (although maybe he would prefer it that way). He's okay as high priest Ranquin, yelling his religious doctrine at the lesser Swampies, but it's a bit of a nothing role for one of Doctor Who's best guest actors. Ditto for the normally riveting Philip Madoc. Just imagine him in the role of the psychotic Thawn - that delicious Welsh voice and steely gaze brimming with menace. Instead he's given the humdrum part of Fener. I suspect that permanent scowl he wears throughout the story required very little acting on Madoc's part. I would've been teed off too. Neil McCarthy does bring a certain amount of gruff intensity to the part, but he's not the best actor in the world and I do think it would have worked better if the roles had been reversed. Oh and let's not even mention Glyn Owen sleepwalking his way through the part of Rohm Dut. His death scene is a merciful release.

Positives? Well there is the germ of a potentially good story buried somewhere here - maybe something about faith vs. science or the destruction of indigenous populations in the name of progress. Uncle Tom does his level best to bring some energy and humour to proceedings and it's really his performance that saves the story from a watery grave. The boggy marshes *do* make a nice change to the usual quarries and sandpits, and the model work is also pretty good, including the design of mighty Kroll himself. Actually that's the thing - Kroll is not a terrible monster at all to be honest - just unconvincingly presented in the long shots. He works far better as a hidden lurking threat than as an image via split screen. I do have a soft spot for the good old rubber tentacles coming through the ducting of the refinery to whisk away an unsuspecting crewman. Nothing wrong with that at all.

I'm a big fan of the gigantic monster movies like King Kong or Godzilla. This story isn't up there with those classics by any stretch of the imagination, but viewed as a Saturday tea-time "creature-feature" it has a certain charm. Kroll attacking the refinery is no worse an effect than some seen in movies of that genre (although admittedly TV has always lagged many years behind Hollywood in what it can accomplish - at least until recently) The monster isn't the problem here  - it's the plot. It could have been so much better with a little more effort.

The Armageddon Factor

Oh dear. This is the point where instead of a thrilling conclusion to the season, the whole crumbling edifice of the arc plot collapses under the weight of its own expectations. We've had twenty episodes to build up to this, so you would expect a story of epic proportions that puts the Doctor in mortal danger in a battle between good and evil. What we get is a serial that would be considered passable in many other seasons but as a capstone to the whole quest it just doesn't work for me.

It's a story driven by its ideas, not its characters - who are, in the main, forgettable. Mind you, the lack of good well developed roles shouldn't really be a surprise - this is a Bob Baker and Dave Martin script after all. They were always ideas men first and foremost. I still think their best script is "Hand of Fear" - but this is a long way off that. It's not all their fault though. Douglas Adams and Anthony Read need to shoulder some of the blame too as they tinkered about with things a fair bit.The end result of four writers input is no better though. It's all over the place. Yes, the main driver is the search for the final segment and keeping the completed cube out of the clutches of the Black Guardian, and yes the core concept of two planets tricked into war (presumably as a test run of the Black Guardian's plan to engender chaos by setting the two halves of the universe against each other) is an intriguing one, and finally yes, it could be seen as a not-so-subtle comment on the Cold War. But there is so much pointless "noise" around this that there is no sense of urgency or scale or and it just doesn't deliver the goods.

The acting is tolerable at the best of times but atrocious elsewhere. Only John Woodvine as the Marshal comes out of this with any kind of dignity - and they shuffle him off into a timeloop to shout "Fire!" ad infinitum all too soon. Based on her performance here as the wet Princess Astra, I'm amazed that Lalla Ward got the role as the regenerated Romana. It's startling how different her subsequent performances are. Mary Tamm definitely wins the battle of the Timeladies on screen here. It's such a shame that her last performance as the character is in such a lacklustre story. I would have loved to see her get another season's worth of adventures under her belt. Perhaps I should check out the Big Finish Fourth Doctor audio plays to get my Romana I fix...

As poor as Lalla Ward is in her first Doctor Who appearance, her characters beleaguered boyfriend Merak is infinitely worse. The only lines he seems to get are a constant whimpering "Astra!!" at every opportunity. He's yet more filler, and certainly doesn't seem to be there for much else beyond being a supposed love interest and bumping up the character count. He's not even a worthwhile hero trying to rescue his princess.

The Shadow is a stereotypical pantomime villain. He's the Hooded Claw from "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop" but without the marvellous voice of Paul Lynde (although that fifty-a-day rasp is not bad). Oh and he loves a good laugh does our bad guy. He's "MWA-HAAAA-HAAAA-HAAAA!"-ing at everything and anything. Putting on his underpants. Having beans on toast. Throwing the Doctor down a pit. Watching 'Countdown'. Seizing the Key To Time. It's all maniacal guffaws a-plenty. It gets a bit tiring to be honest. Actually, I do think that something / someone like the Shadow should have been introduced much earlier in the season, to demonstrate that the Black Guardian was a tangible presence behind the scenes (we only got a couple of throwaway lines across the previous four stories). Imagine if Mr Fibuli from "The Pirate Planet" had actually been the Shadow in disguise! He does say that he has been watching the Doctor for some time. Maybe I'm trying to assign modern scripting techniques and our current fascination with arc plots seeding throughout a season too much to something made in 1979. I just think it would have spiced things up a bit and also made the Shadow's reveal in this story more of a big deal. Thinking back to when I first watched this though, I do remember being scared witless by the Shadow and his skull mask and deep voice, so maybe it was pitched at the right level for children after all.

In the litany of acting awfulness how could I forget Davyd Harries as the hapless Schapp. A man so inept that he can't even fall over properly. He starts off as a dull but reasonably efficient aide to the Mashall, and there are some nice facial expressions as you can see he is a bit bemused by his leader's increasingly erratic behaviour. But all of that gets lost because Shapp transforms into a bumbling imbecile by around episode three. There is a long proud tradition of the male as a fool in British situation comedy, but - newsflash - this *isn't* a comedy (well not intentionally). That cry of “MERRAA-AAAA-AAA-KKKK!” as he stumbles into the lift -  <<Shudder>>. His partner in the crime of mediocrity is Del-Boy Timelord Drax. Barry Jackson does his best, bless him, but sadly, he fails to make Drax anywhere near believable. Again it's this dichotomy of the writers trying to lighten the mood amongst all the supposed drama (the story isn't as serious and grim as it likes to think it is) but instead they give us cliché after terrible cliché. Like Merak, Drax seems only to be there to pad out things so they can fill the six episode slot. Cut out all that fooling around and shrinking and stuff and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the real plot. Tom Baker tries to salvage things with his own brand of humour but it's a thankless task. He is as watchable as ever though and gets his slice of "ham" just the right side of the line including that eyelash-fluttering, look-at-me-I'm-bonkers scene in the TARDIS. That was probably the toned down take knowing Tom.

The biggest disappointment of course is that fact that after spending twenty-six episodes finding the Key to Time, nothing is really resolved. What was the great disaster that was causing things to be "out of balance"? How do we fix it? You "stop time" and then what? Basically all that happens is that the Doctor gets all the segments, has a bit of a chat with the Black Guardian (not even in person and doing a very poor impression of the White Guardian) and then...scatters them through time and space again. (At least we get to enjoy the sonorous tones of Valentine Dyall, so that's some small consolation. I could listen to that man read the back of a cereal packet). The viewer is left thinking "what was all the fuss about?". It's a shame because many of the rest of the stories from this season are very good, but the "The Armageddon Factor" diminishes them slightly when watched in sequence. That's not something I will be repeating any time soon.

All in all, I would consider the Key To Time season a noble failure. It was the first time Doctor Who had tried this kind of arc plot and although the end result didn't work, it did pave the way for things to come (with their own varying levels of success). If nothing else, amongst all the clunkers (and I realise that I have perhaps been quite harsh on a couple of them) this season did contain some of my favourite Tom Baker stories. Of course despite all its faults, the Graham Williams era is about to produce a stone-cold classic. Yes, The Horns of Nimon is almost upon us...