Most of the JNT era leaves me somewhat cold, but I don't mind Mawdryn.. so much. It's certainly better than the story that followed, Terminus IMO. And anything with the Brig in it ain't so bad..
Those stories are fine (other than the abysmal Black Guardian). They just suffer from the padding. It would be interesting to isolate and assemble all of the clips of people wandering around on space ships from both serials and string them together. You'd probably have at least an hour or so of (very dull) material.
Thanks to a late Christmas gift, I now have the Black Guardian trilogy on dvd. For the original series, I only have two stories left - Keys of Marinus and Destiny of the Daleks - that are out, that I don't have. And I'm pretty sure I'll be able to pick up Marinus during my trip in two weeks.
Be sure to look out for the accidental shot of Katy Manning's purple knickers, won't you. There was a bit of a wardrobe malfunction..
Oh now you're just messing with us. Why would I be looking at a girl's knickers? Now if you'll excuse me, I have to watch that scene of Jamie on the ladder with the camera facing right up his kilt.
lmao ok, that's funny. But I liked guys long before I met Barrowman. :P
The Claws of Axos 3
In the lab, the Axonite comes to life and starts attacking people, then kidnaps the Doctor and Jo. The Axonites tell the Doctor their whole plan.
Due to his massive fuck up, Chinn is forced to resign. He simply forgets to tell anybody around him.
The Axons interrogate the Doctor, trying to get the secret of time travel - the secret he doesn't even remember, thanks to the blocks placed in his memories by the Time Lords.
The Master repeatedly tries to get the Doctor's Tardis fixed, without success.
The Doctor works with the Axons. While their experiment is failing, he escapes. The Master works with UNIT. In the end, he flips a switch that will destroy the Axon ship - with Jo and the Doctor trapped inside.
* * *
Interesting, the Master working with UNIT. It almost looks like the Brig and the Master have a sort of respect for each other, though they are on opposite sides of everything.
Jo is still a useless creaming banshee. Can she die now, please?
The video for the first half of this episode is just terrible. It's really shitty quality. I know it was one of the earliest releases, but it looks like they didn't even make a bit of effort cleaning it up. The newer releases (as well as the previous two episodes) look SO much better. When these things cost 20 bucks - or more - for a single story, I expect better.
The Claws of Axos 4
Jo stands around screaming. The Doctor slaps her and tells her to stop it. I rewound that scene about 15 times.
The Doctor and Jo escape and rejoin their UNIT colleagues. (um, wasn't the ship supposed to go boom? or are we just supposed to forget the last episode happened?)
The Doctor and the Master go inside the Doc's Tardis. The Doctor offers to let the Master travel with him, and they do work together for a little while.
The Doctor tells the Brig off, steps back inside his Tardis and tells the Master to start er up. It dematerializes and reappears in the Axos' ship. He fakes a deal with them that will end up destroying them.
The Master escapes, everyone leaves, the ship and complex go boom, and the Tardis materializes next to the Brig, far away from the explosion.
* * *
The video quality is back to the normal high standards, so that's good. The continuity, however, leaves something to be desired. What, we're just supposed to forget that the cliffhanger has the Axos ship go boom, without a single line of dialog suggesting they stopped it?
What the fuck kind of power does Jo have over the Doctor? In the last episode, the Doctor agrees to work with the Axons only after they show him a picture of what Jo would look like if she was old. Here, he specifically says that when he goes away, Jo is the only one he will miss. In an unscientific poll, I've ranked her the most useless companion in the history of ever. What is it the Doctor sees in her, I just don't get it? It's certainly not that she is "pretty" since let's face it, he's had better looking girls around. And Jamie. It's not that she's smart, because she's dumb as a fucking box of rocks. I know there are people who complain about Adric and Rose, but have they seen an episode with Jo?
All that said, I DID like the story. The idea of a living ship (years before Babylon 5 or Farscape tried it) is fascinating, and then to throw in that everything aboard the ship, including the "people" are all just part of the one being? That's a really cool concept, and I think they pulled it off splendidly.
