Doctor Who Season 8
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
055: Terror of the Autons
(First watched 2024-09-06, -08, -11, -15) Finally, the The Master appears. In a TARDIS that properly chameleons itself. And not only him, but another Time Lord shows up in an invisible TARDIS just to tell the Doctor that the Master is there, and then do nothing about it.
The green screen effect was pretty bad in at least the first episode. Searching around I see it's kind of famous for that. I also found shots of this episode where the backgrounds looked much better, which I'm supposing are from a Blu-ray remaster or something.
Jo Grant is very different from Liz Shaw. Not a competent scientist, but some sort of... screw-up given a nepotism post and keeping her job with the Doctor because he can't work up the courage to fire her quickly. But she does seem to have some weird skills like lockpicking.
The story depended on the Nestene consciousness being out of UNIT's hands for the Master to steal. So uhh... what the hell was the Brigadier thinking, just loaning it out?
Episode 2... a chair ate a dude and a doll killed a dude. They really are going beyond the "Autons = mannequins" that we saw last year, and that's been most common in their 21st century appearances.
Episode 3... now some sort of evil plastic flowers are being spread and the Doctor is being strangled by a phone cord. I really am enjoying the variety of plastic menaces.
Aside from the greenscreen stuff on the non-remastered version, maybe the least convincing effect are the masks. Like, the Master was disguised as the telephone installation man. He looked perfectly like another regular dude. UNTIL they needed a close-up of him removing the mask, at which point it looked like a horribly fake mask.
So the Doctor failed to repair his TARDIS with a piece from the Master's, but in the process has also made the Master stuck on Earth. I suppose that's why he's apparently such a recurring character during this period.
The Master seems pretty wishy-washy. At the end he and the Autons essentially win, but the Doctor essentially says "...sure, but will the Autons honor your alliance?" at which point the Master is like "Oh shit, better switch sides for the moment!" Very funny that in the end the Master's big escape plan is... driving away in a very conspicuous van. And the military can't find him before he dumps it.
The Doctor seems cheerful about the opportunity to have the Master as a continuing adversary, which I'm sure is appreciated by the people who keep dying in these episodes.
056: The Mind of Evil
057: The Claws of Axos
058: Colony in Space
059: The Dæmons