Doctor Who Season 5
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
037: The Tomb of the Cybermen
(First watched 2014-07-09, -10, -08-14, -15) Hey, it's nice to see some actual moving film footage again.
The Doctor seems to be his own worst enemy here. On the one hand he's like "The Cybermen are super awful and the evil here should remain buried forever!" but on the other hand he's the one helping the archaeological team to bypass tomb security and showing them the system by which the internal machinery operates.
I like how the hatch-opening problem was solved two different ways. The Doctor used knowledge of mathematics to figure out the proper pattern of lever pulls, while later the engineers needing to follow partially disassembled the panel to examine the circuitry attached to the levers. It struck me as... good game design, allowing different paths for progression.
The Doctor pretending to go along with the villain's plain in such an overblown manner was great. A scene I could see showing up nearly unchanged in a Matt Smith episode.
038: The Abominable Snowmen
(First watched 2014-08-21, 2016-06-13, -14, -15, -16, -17)
039: The Ice Warriors
(First watched 2016-06-20, then totally forgot about and rewatched for the first time 2023-11-27, -29, -30, -12-04, -06, -08)
"No plants, no carbon dioxide." As I suspected, searching this up it is one of the famous boners in Doctor Who science.
The second one is the first I've watched of the animated recreations. And... it's OK? 2D animation with skeleton, kind of the Live2D look, something you might expect from a moderately well put together indie video game? If it were a new animated show it would seem very cheap, but as its purpose is really to be a replacement for the fan-made reconstructions made out of things like publicity stills, it's a massive improvement in watchability. Regarding the actual contents of the second episode... the ice warrior seemed kind of surprised that he was able to be revived. I guess they hadn't yet decided that was their thing? And the big secret to his revival was just... being warmed up by electricity.
So far Victoria has accused the ice warriors of murder three times from seeing them knock people down, but has only been right on one count.
040: The Enemy of the World
(First watched 2024-01-12, -14, -16, -17, -19, -21)
Man, the Second Doctor is goofy fun. Lands on a beach, immediately goes for a swim and wants to make sand castles. Until the dudes in the hovercraft start shooting him. They get in a helicopter and from some markings inside can see the year is something near 2018. Troughton has a dual role in this serial, as he's also playing the man the Doctor has been mistaken for: the incredibly-similar-looking-but-with-a-different-accent-and-hair-comb, Salamander.
Part 4, what is Salamander up to? I briefly thought it was some sort of "surface dwellers vs underground people" thing where Salamander could be viewed as a hero to his own people, but it seems like he's playing them too. They seem to think there's been a nuclear war above ground or something, so they're not safe to return? But really he's just got them stuck down there causing "natural" disasters he can use to further his goals upstairs.
OK, so in the end this one was a lot of fun. Patrick Troughton getting to be the villain with a silly accent. A near future (for the time) Earth. A story that moved along quickly enough.
What a sudden ending. It would've been really something if the Doctor had been left behind, but Salamander improperly starting up the TARDIS and getting sucked out into the vortex is quite a way to go!
Other times the Doctor's actor has had a dual role, there's usually some clear story reason. Something is copying the Doctor, or bringing out some different aspect of him, whatever. In this case it's just... some unrelated guy who happens to look a lot like him. Though given things that have been established in more recent years (the TARDIS taking the Doctor where he needs to be, the Doctor sometimes picking faces for reasons he doesn't consciously understand), today we might interpret it as the Second Doctor looking like he does because he was meant to stop Salamander.
041: The Web of Fear
(First watched 2024-01-23, -24, -30, -31, -02-03, -06)
The Doctor comments on how strange it is they keep appearing on Earth. Get used to it, pal.
I wish I hadn't taken like a ten-year break during this season, as this seems like a pretty direct followup to The Abominable Snowmen just several serials back. It's even got a returning actor, now with a big beard pasted on to help the illusion that he's aged 40 years.
Must've been another case of an actor having their vacation, as the Doctor was absent from the second episode.
The third episode is another animated recreation, but done very differently than the earlier ones I saw. This one uses fully 3D sets and characters. And while it definitely makes things dynamic, the people and especially their heads/faces just look pretty ugly from a lot of angles. The heads don't seem to be using very detailed 3D models, so at an off angle it's like looking at a LEGO dude with his head twisted.
I like how in this serial there's not just the weird effects on the show intro, but a different type of weird effects for the end credits, showing the web/fungus.
042: Fury from the Deep
(First watched 2024-02-07, -09, -11, -13, -16)
Hey, is that the first appearance of the sonic screwdriver? It's used to... open something up.
This animated recreation seems to go beyond the scope of the original. At least, based on all the other episodes I've seen I doubt the original would've had many of the wider shots showing more landscape, big sets, etc. would've been there. They also seem to have recast some of the non-speaking roles to add more diversity to the future. At least, I assume the original didn't have technicians played by a guy in a turban and an Asian woman.
So the main enemy in this one is some kind of seaweed that can infect people and bring them into its group consciousness. But they often talk about the danger of "the weed" such that it sometimes sounds like anti-drug propaganda.
The Doctor flying the helicopter was pretty great. I like how the conversation basically went "Do you know how to fly this?" "Remember? We watched someone else do it a few episodes back."
I knew Victoria was leaving, but I wondered how. I mean, they have a general lack of control of the TARDIS, so would it take the TARDIS being sympathetic for a change to get her home? But as it turns out, she wouldn't be comfortable back home anyway and just decides to stay in whatever future Earth time they'd ended up on. These early years really had companions shuffling all across history, didn't they?
043: The Wheel in Space
(First watched 2024-02-27, -03-03, -05, -06, -12)
Showing up on a drifting crewless spaceship reminded me of the recent Wild Blue Yonder. The TARDIS is currently screwed up due to lack of mercury... that seems like a pretty easy point of failure that could strand someone pretty bad. Nice bit of continuity, though, looking for mercury to fix the same thing was the same excuse the First Doctor used to get everyone else to agree to explore the Dalek city before they knew it was the Dalek city. Considering the TARDIS has deemed this area unsafe and there are no people around, they sure seem to take it pretty easy. Jamie's just like "Aight, I'm gonna take a nap." I like that their meal is non-food pills, but with flavor and apparently a sense of filling.
Another no-Doctor episode in there. Kind of impressed, Mr. 18th century had to make his own attempts to get the attention of people on the Wheel, obfuscate their origins, and find a way to disable a laser to keep the TARDIS safe... even if he's still 18th century enough to be confused by someone making an audio recording a couple episodes later.
The scienceyness here seems half-baked. They talk about dangers from stars going nova including meteorites? Come on, son.
This story... just felt like it didn't have much meat on its bones. I found myself thinking about what had happened so far, and being surprised I was already through 5 of 6 episodes. It wasn't until almost the end that most people on the Wheel even started seeing Cybermen and not half thinking the Doctor was a crazy person.
Some of the 1960s effects were pretty goofy. Like the Cybermen moving through space with a goofy walk.
So Zoe has decided to join up, and the Doctor tries to warn her what she's getting into with a Dalek clip show. This is the end of the season and I have to assume all the actors/sets will have been long gone by the time the next serial starts. So I wonder if they ever acknowledge the people left behind and say Zoe told them what she was doing, or if they're just left thinking the Doctor and Jamie abducted her.
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