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
(First watched 2024-10-08, -09, -11, -16, -18, -20) I don't quite understand the machine in use in the prison. So it removes bad impulses from prisoners... but what's it storing? If it was just electrical imbalances or whatever there'd be nothing to store, but they talk about the device being 65% full. So is it supposed to be physically removing some sort of evil substance? That they have no better way of disposing of than just leaving it in the machine indefinitely? That's how you create deadly Doctor Who villains, dude. I also don't understand how it is using mental control to convince people to die, but they actually end up with water in the lungs and whatnot. That's going beyond the mental, unless their brain convinced the rest of their body to secrete liquid to the lungs?
Next episode, aaaand the Master's back. And so are his masks that look perfect until they look awful when he removes them.
Jo gets caught in a hostage situation... then ends it by stealing a gun and shooting it. She's crazier than I realized! Even crazier is a half hour episode that manages to have the same prison overtaken by prisoners twice in one episode, but I guess with the Master's help anything is possible.
I don't quite understand how the Master is involved in all this. Just, logistically. He's "Dr. Keller" who provided the machine that removes the negative impulses from prisoners, sure. But for him to take on this persona, make the device, get it accepted by enough people to actually start putting into practice... wouldn't that mean he's been at this for a very long time? Certainly he'd have had to start it before the events of the previous episode, even though in the previous episode he wouldn't have known he was going to NEED another plan. Maybe he's just the kind of guy who plans for failure and has 10 evil schemes cooking simultaneously just in case?
So once things started getting sorted out and UNIT thought they'd be able to remotely detonate the missile... I was surprised how gung-ho they were for that solution! I mean, sure, beats having it launched to London. But this was supposed to be a nuclear bomb plus nerve gas component? Seems like a bad thing to set off several miles outside of London, too! Luckily at the end when they do use it... it seems like the lamest-ass nuclear weapon I've ever seen, with about enough power to take down a shed. Nice story contrivance that the mind parasite needed something like a nuclear weapon to be destroyed.
I seem to be complaining or confused quite a bit, but I think this is a fair example of where Doctor Who can shine from the regular characters. Doctor/Master and Doctor/Brigadier especially have fun scenes together. Whereas the Doctor has occasionally been really down on the Brigadier when he goes for the more military solution, in this episode their interactions seemed more like mutually respectful teasing, which is more fun to watch.
So I thought the Master would be stuck on Earth throughout this season, but he now has his TARDIS repaired. I still have the impression he'll be a big part of the rest of the season, but now he's got a hell of a lot more flexibility on what to do.
057: The Claws of Axos
058: Colony in Space
059: The Dæmons