Yes the whole black/white pieces is a cheat, but that's the point, Fenric never considers that he can actually cheat, its beauty is in its simplicity. Yeah the writer of this was somewhat left of centre I suspect ( to say the least) his politics are non too subtle "workers of the world unite" Millington's plan to poison those poor innocent Soviets etc etc. I don't mind the use of his faith in communism though as it's an interesting reworking of a classic vampire trope. More interesting, though not explicit, is the idea that Judson is homosexual, and was based upon Alan Turing. I think the writer intended to suggest that Judson and Millington were former lovers, both hiding their true selves. There are some ropey bits late on, Ace's 'seduction' of the guard for one, although her "I'm not a little girl anymore, Professor," line is awesome. The reveal of who the baby is (or will be) and the Doctor literally having to break Ace's faith in him are tough moments that wouldn't look out of place in modern Who.
Agreed on pretty much all counts. Oh, and the vampires are pretty successful on the creepy factor, coming out of the sea I'm varying vintages of decaying period clothing and varying degrees of change to vampire. Yeah I'd heard the Turing thing before and they probably had to tread lightly on that-and Ace's "seduction", for a '80s family show.
The book is specific that they were at boarding school together, and that Millington at least was attracted to Judson. When Judson seemed to be showing attention to another boy, Millington hard-tackled him during a rugby game in revenge, and did it too well, causing the injury that left Judson crippled.
According to Ian Briggs, Judson and Millington were meant as lovers at one point, but there no way that could've worked out back in '80s.
2/3 of the way through "Survival." Retro didn't show the McCoy Dalek story from last season and they skipped over "Ghost Light" from this season. With already abridged seasons with 3 part stories on top of that, Monday will be the last day of the run they started...August 8th-ish? Be interesting to see if they follow "Survival: Part 3" with "An Unearthly Child." And yeah, "Survival" is a mess, but I'm not going into it. Well, apart from saying Anthony Ainley got seriously boned as the Master. Delgado had multiple awesome TARDISes, regularly stole secret files from the Time Lords, and had schemes to rule the universe. Even rotten dying Master came within a hair's breadth of destroying Gallifrey to gain Real Ultimate Power. Ainley tries to take over the galaxy but very nearly destroys it and pretty soon he winds up regularly stranded with his eevil schemes being reduced to things like trying to prevent the signing of the Magna Carta and hustling blowjobs behind the local gay bar.
Ian Briggs I think has a thing for vampire mythology-In Dragonfire, You've got Kane, who is meant to be somewhat of a Dracula type (Plus Glitz's ship is called the Nosferatu), sleeping in coffins and melting from sunlight, and then Fernic's Haemavores of course make heavy use of Vampire stuff, even more so in the extended edition on DVD which has Soren and co. use wooden stakes. Funny thing is Judson's nurse is played by Anne Reid, who meets her end from the Haemavores (or is turned into one). Anne Reid would later play the Plasmavore Florence in the Tennant season 3 opener Smith & Jones.
Well considering the Time Lords themselves fought vampires, and used giant space harpoons to kill them. The King vampires were that big, that you needed a ship to kill them.
Interesting points, all round. I'll briefly come back to "...Fenric." There was one shot, maybe 2 seconds on screen, as the Soviets are approaching the grounds, where one of the soldiers has a backpack full of wooden stakes. Along with the bit about the commander and the codebreaker that was in the book and lots of other things from other stories from this era; I'd really love to see the early drafts of the scripts, because I suspect they explain a lot of the things that, when I watched the episodes, I found myself going "HUH???" A lot of the time it is possible in the McCoy and Colin Baker stories to take something inexplicable onscreen and deduce what is going on and why it figures into the plot. But while you're stopping to do that, you've dropped out of the narrative--and they've dropped 3 more inexplicable things in your lap. Eventually it just overwhelms you. I think it really shows what a mistake it was to not use writers and directors who had experience in working within the limitations of telling a "Dr. Who" story.
By the late '80s many of the shows older writers and directors were either dead or retired. And really how are they get new blood on the show unless they're brought in? And really Moffat has done the same thing bringing in new writers and directors.
Doctor Who revisited, Spearhead From Space and Pyramids Of Mars. Both of which are great stories from Robert Holmes, but Pyraminds has held up better I think. It is a shame though that Liz had only one season, I like the Steed/Peel styled relationship of the third Doctor and Liz. It is nice seeing the stories in omibus format, but I have noticed something odd about the pan shots, I'll have to check out the other DVDs to be sure, but there's something strange about some of the scenes.
Terror of the Autons. Very good story and a great introduction to both The Master and Jo. The Third Doctor really acts like an ass though when dealing with others, particularly UNIT. You definitely see shades of that with 12.
OMG yes that story freaked me out as a kid..... Love it. Same for the Bionic Woman when the fembots faces come off that just freaked me out so much. But it's such a cool bit of makeup effects.
Concur on both "Spearhead" and "Pyramids." "Pyramids" is possibly my favorite story of all time, but "Spearhead" is very good too. Of course neither of them is in the RetroTV syndicated package. I wish they hadn't made Liz such a pushover. She's a real, actual Doctor, for goodness sake--the best UNIT could get on earth. Then this...alien comes in and steals her job. And he doesn't even have the decency to call her "Doctor." I understand that it could have been problematic to have 2 "doctors," but I think they could have made it work. The first time he calls her "Liz" and sends her off to answer phones or make coffee, she should have corrected him and pointed out it is "Dr. Shaw."
Could not agree more. I blame the writers. Even as a kid I could tell the difference and thought she should have told him off.
In Spearhead Liz allowed the Doctor to call her Liz instead of Miss Shaw and really she only answered the phone when he was busy and she never got him coffee.
This. Liz worked well with the Doctor though it annoyed me from The Silurians to Inferno, the Doctor and Brigadier repeatedly refer to her as "Miss Shaw" instead of "Dr. Shaw." They acknowledge she's a doctor but don't seem to think it's necessary to address her as such.
Something they sort of did with the McCoy stories is that the novelizations (Done for most Doctor Who stories back then) were actually far more detailed than the actual TV stories, and in some cases could get away with elements that couldn't be used on TV. Rememberance of the Daleks is a good example of this. This sort of led to the "New Adventures" novels, in some ways.